You’ve heard of the “religious police” in Saudi Arabia? They are the bully-boys with the swagger sticks who go after public outrages like women exposing their arms or couples who are smooching.

My point in bringing them up, is that they have turned to a new target — household pets.

The Saudi Arabian police see the sale of dogs and cats, particularly dogs, as a sign of “Western decadence” and are trying to put a stop to people owning them.

The decree against pets applies to Jidda, the Port City on the Red Sea, and the Holy City of Mecca and was recently issued.

None of the other Arab countries restrict the ownership of pets — although the Iranian government and its mullahs have generally been hostile to dogs and cruelty to dogs is common in every Arab country, particularly among Islamic fundamentalists.

This confounds me. The affection and loyalty of a good dog seems to me to be God-given, whether he is sitting by your feet patiently waiting for the nightly walk or quivering with excitement in a duck blind or a corn field as you both hear the emerging beat of a pheasant’s wings.

For me and tens of millions of Americans dogs are true and loving companions, the very best there is.

But Muslim fundamentalists do not like dogs at all and their behavior towards them affects their societies. Ask anyone who has traveled in Afghanistan, for example, where dogs, even puppies, are frequently stoned to death and animals are beaten and mistreated — a society where kindness and compassion to lesser creatures, and to man himself, is in very short supply.

My friend Pam Constable, deputy Foreign Editor at the Washington Post, started a charity in Afghanistan when she was a correspondent in Kabul back a few years ago.

“The Afghan Stray Animal League” it’s called, and it helps abused dogs and cats, treating and housing about 40 at a time in an old house that Pam took over in Kabul.

Its tough work. The stories Pam tells about the cruelty to animals in that country would turn your stomach.

Some Islamic leaders claim they tolerate dogs — after all, the Koran asks for decent treatment of all of God’s creatures. But then again, they say the same thing about women and we know how well they fare under Muslim fundamentalism.

Do you remember the killing of six British soldiers in a police station in an Iraqi town north of Basra a couple of years ago? It received lots of news coverage.

The killings were caused, in part, because the soldiers used dogs to search houses for weapons and explosives. I’m serious.

“We are a Muslim country and we can’t accept the British entering our homes with dogs,” said Saad Hussein, who lives near the police station and who offered that as explanation, and an excuse, for the murders.

I first thought about Muslims and dogs when I was traveling in Iran a few years ago.

Early mornings, I walked through crowded neighborhoods of Tehran and the city of Isfahan. I saw no dogs. I heard no barking. How strange to see not one sign of a dog in a big city, I thought.

I ran into a friend from Pakistan outside of a hotel, the wife of a former ambassador to the US, and a Muslim. I hadn’t seen her for years. We stood beneath a large wall poster that said “Down with America” and I asked her, “Where are all the dogs?”

She said, “Many Muslims hate dogs. They think they are like the devil. They beat them, throw stones at them, kill them.”

Four years ago, in Islamabad, Pakistan, I arrived for dinner at the home of a prosperous Pakistani woman, a Sunni Muslim.

I was greeted at the door by a liver and white English Springer Spaniel. (Weirdly, he had the same name as my youngest son: “Buckley. Even more weirdly, my son Buckley has a tattoo of a Liver & White Springer Spaniel, a long ago family pet named “Willie” on his leg.)

I asked my host why she had a dog in the house, I thought Muslims didn’t like them. She said, “We have traveled to Europe, and we have been to America. We don’t buy all that Muslim stuff against dogs and there are many Muslims who think like us… but here in Islamabad, and among the Arabs, dog lovers are a very small minority.”

“The others treat dogs very cruelly. They think they are dirty. The more unwashed they are themselves… the more they believe dogs are unclean,” She said. “The Koran says that you must wash anything seven times that has been touched by a dog and then wash it again with dust. I’d rather be touched by my dog Buckley than one of those Pashtun men who hate dogs and never bathe. I’d wash a lot more than seven times if one of them ever touched me.”

This woman not only had a Springer Spaniel but I have to admit she was a heavy drinker. She and another woman friend, also a Muslim who said she liked dogs, and who had been living in Dubai, proceeded to get very drunk during that dinner — so both of them as social reporters were something of an anomaly in that strict society.

Not long after, I mentioned the problem some Muslims have with dogs to another dinner companion, a woman from London.

She had been telling me how much she loves her Belgium shepherd dog and I told her of my experiences with Islam and dogs. She said, “I’d kiss her on the lips long before I’d kiss Yasar Arafat,” she said.”

According to Islamic “hadith” (a “hadith” is a reliably reported account of what the prophet Mohammed said or did), “whoever keeps a dog” will lose one measure of the reward his good deeds have earned him in heaven for every day until he gets rid of that dog.

Two measures will be lost daily, says another interpretation, meaning, I suppose, that that promised bevy of 70 virgins could fade like the morning mist.

The only exceptions allowed are dogs for hunting and guarding cattle and they are only to be kept out doors.

One hadith says that all black dogs shall be killed. “The black dog is evil.”

Another hadith says: “Angels of mercy will not enter a house where there is a dog.”

This is the story from the Koran:

Gabriel made a promise to Allah’s messenger to come to a woman’s house, but he did not appear. There was a staff in the hand of the messenger when he found out that Gabriel had broken the promise. He threw it down. He said:

“Never has Allah or his messenger ever broken their promise.” Then he cast a glance, by chance, and found a puppy under a bed. He asked the woman who owned the house, when did this dog enter here? She said she didn’t know.

He then commanded that the puppy be thrown out of the house. Gabriel came and Allah’s messenger said to him: “You promised me and I waited for you but you didn’t come.” Gabriel said, ‘it was the dog in the house which prevented me. We angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture.’

“The very next morning he commanded the dogs to be killed. He announced that the dog kept for the orchards should also be killed, but he spared the dog used for protection of extensive fields.”

Another hadith favored by fundamentalist clerics is: “Were dogs not a species of creature I should command they all be killed, but kill every black one. The black dog is a devil.”

Some clerics preach that for a Muslim to keep “Shaytaan,” the devil, out of his home, he must ban not only dogs, but pictures, music, bells and crosses (”this symbol — the cross — shows that {Christians} are a group who do not think with their minds but have been deceived by Shaytaan,” is a popular view said a cleric.)

I asked a Muslim friend in Washington about all this.

“Don’t use my name or you’ll bring me grief” he said, “but a lot of this is left over from belief in witchcraft. These interpretations have been made over the years, some of them are crazy.

“Like every time you hear a dog bark at night you re supposed to say “bismillah” (In the Name of Allah.)

“Fundamentalist Muslims don’t like dogs and they don’t trust cats, though they like them better because they think they are cleaner; they bury their waste in the garden and don’t leave it on the grass like dogs”

Another hadith, rejected by some, but widely circulated, says that the presence of “a woman, a dog or a donkey disrupts prayer.” Most of those who currently reject this hadith have done so relatively recently because of pressure over the publicized anti-female aspect of it.

The love of dogs by the French is one reason why some Americans, people like me for instance, can more easily forgive their plentiful cultural and political failings. After all, the same people who groveled at the feet of the Wermacht bring their dogs along to sidewalk café’s, even black dogs, and treat them with affection and respect.

Earlier I mentioned the work of Washington Post Foreign Correspondent Pam Constable who as helped so many animals in Afghanistan.

Constable was assigned to Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in early 2002, when the city and the society were in ruins. The streets were full of strays, and she began sheltering them and treating them in her office.

Two years later, she found an old house in the city and converted it into a small private shelter and clinic.

She now has an all-Afghan staff of seven, including a part-time vet. And the work they do is invariably free of charge.

Most importantly, they strive to foster a culture of decent treatment and compassion in a poor country where most people are influenced by Radical Islamists into believing that all animals are unclean, especially dogs — should not be kept in the home –and that bad treatment and cruelty is OK.

Fundamentalist Muslims and their children, literally, are missing out on the joy that a dog can bring to a life. These differences with Western culture — in this case over the treatment of both women and dogs are not niggling or without consequence.

Life with women silenced and under wraps, and a life without dogs at all, wouldn’t be much of a life, at least not to me — and maybe not to you.

But it works for many Muslim clerics and hundreds of millions of their followers. Sad and pathetic, I’d say.

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