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Losing Good Deeds Everyday For Keeping A Dog
There is an infamous narration that says if a person keeps a dog that’s not a watchdog or hunting dog will lose good deeds everyday
Narrated Ibn `Umar:
The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “Whoever keeps a (pet) dog which is neither a watch dog nor a hunting dog, will get a daily deduction of two Qirat from his good deeds.”Source: https://sunnah.com/bukhari:5480
What is Ghamidi Sahab’s stance on this narration? I don’t understand Urdu and none of his videos on dogs have English subtitles except one short video and in that video he did not talk about any hadith. Can anyone here help me find out?
sunnah.com
Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (saws) in English and Arabic
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Losing Good Deeds Everyday For Keeping A Dog
updated 4 hours, 49 minutes ago
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According to Ghamidi Sahab, when all the variants and related ahadith on this topic are studied and after reviewing them in the light of Quran, this Hadith is referring to the fact that no dog should be kept captive or deprived of its freedom by putting it in a cage when there is no genuine reason behind it. A dog should be properly trained and given its due freedom instead of keeping it in a cage and violating its other rights.
Please refer to the video below from 15:48 to 18:51 (Although the whole video is very informative).
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How did Ghamidi sahab come to this conclusion? Is there any narration or historic evidence that shows dogs were kept in cages at that time? Because I didn’t see any hadith like that so far.
The video you linked probably answers it but as I said before I don’t understand Urdu and because the video doesn’t have any English subtitles I couldn’t understand what he was saying.
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This requires an understanding of how Ghamidi Sahab approaches Hadith Corpus academically. Following response will help you understand his approach in this regard:
Discussion 66135 • Reply 66162
As a summary:
Since narrations lack their context at most of the times and narrators narrate them in terms of their own interpretation and their own wordings without giving due regard to the context of the hadith. This applies to all those narrations equally whose chain of narrators are strong and they have either been categorized as Sahih or Hassan. Therefore, it is the job of an Islamic Scholar to relate those narrations in line with the absolute principles laid out in Quran and Sunnah.
When it comes to the narrations on dogs specifically, there can be two possible contexts under which such statements may have been said by the Prophet (sws):
i) As per the viewpoint of Hassan Sahab as stated in the video above, when this narration and all its variants are studied in the light of established principles of Quran and Sunnah, specially the ethical principles (like not to violate rights of others, not to do injustice etc.), it becomes imperative that these ahadith are not talking about keeping dogs as pet in isolation, rather they talk about keeping dogs without any purpose when their rights are being violated and the exceptions mentioned in Ahadith like hunting dogs, watch dogs etc. support this point. We see other ahadith supporitng this point when it came to the rights of cats as well, where people were give warning of Hell when they did not take care and fulfil rights of a cat in one scenario.
ii) Second context could be a temporary warning: There came a time in Medina when all the dogs of Medina were either killed or removed from the city as a temporary directive because at couple of instances the impurity casued by their excretions became a hindrance in the way of revelation (see: https://sunnah.com/muslim:2105). Therefore, all dogs, except for the dogs who were watch dogs for big orchards were ordered to be killed. This narration could very well be in that context where people were asked to refrain from keeping dogs until the revelation completes itself except for the dogs required as an absolute necessity like hunting dogs or watch dogs etc. to keep the problem causing hindrance in the revelation to its minimal.
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Who’s the earliest scholar who would have taken the same view as Ghamidi Sahab on this issue? If there is then can I get a reference.
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