Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani recently made a post with a speech about the growing Islamic environment in New York and stated: "Finally, NYC is leaning toward Islam. Dogs definitely have a place in society, just not as pets inside the home. As we've always said, they are impure." In response to this post, Florida Republican Congressman Randy Fine wrote: "Choosing between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult task."
Following the controversy provoked by these statements, Nerdeen Kiswani claimed that her assertions were "satire" and a "joke" related to the problem of dog waste on the streets, and not a serious political proposal, stating that she doesn't care whether people have dogs or not, but rather that owners don't clean up the waste they leave on the streets.
The controversy quickly acquired national proportions, with violent accusations against the Republican congressman, accused of being racist and Islamophobic. But a quick internet search reveals numerous situations where Muslims reject the existence of dogs, considered "impure" as pets.
In the city of Manchester, pamphlets were distributed in 2016 to a series of residences, calling for the prohibition of dogs in public spaces. There are countless articles (and news of sanctions) related to Muslim taxi drivers who refuse to transport guide dogs for the blind in the United Kingdom - eventually being punished for it. Even among the main schools of Quranic interpretation, positions vary. Generally speaking, it is considered that Muslims cannot have dogs as pets, but only admit their use as guard dogs.
Due to various ahadith (sayings of the Prophet), Muslims generally do not have dogs as pets, but rather as working animals. For example, the Prophet said: 'Whoever keeps a dog for any purpose other than hunting, herding, or agriculture, will lose a great reward every day.' (Bukhari)
According to an article on the subject by Imam John Yahya Ederer, there is also some difference of opinion on this matter. 'The Maliki opinion is that the hadith [about working dogs] does not indicate prohibition, but rather that it is makrooh (disliked). There is also a rare opinion from a handful of Malikis that all prohibitions on owning a dog were abrogated, and therefore keeping a dog as a pet is permissible.'
Although a small minority of Muslims might have pet dogs, throughout Muslim-majority lands, it is very uncommon for people to have dogs inside their homes. They are much more likely to have cats, rabbits, birds, or other pets.
The controversy surrounding this issue now emerges with another impact due to the prominence that Islam has acquired in New York City, following the election of socialist and Muslim Zohran Mamdani. The controversy about banning dogs as pets - poorly disguised as satire by the author, Nerdeen Kiswani - is a detail that joins another, much more important one. With Mamdani's election, mosques in New York have stopped respecting noise legislation, beginning to broadcast their first daily call to prayer (at five in the morning...) through high-power sound systems.
These two aspects characterize what is the second phase of power conquest by Muslims in a society where they are a minority. In the first phase, the attitude is conciliatory, with Muslim communities emphasizing their respect for the laws and traditions of the Western countries they immigrate to. In this phase, they adopt the discourse of "taqiyya," an Islamic concept that allows a Muslim to conceal their faith or religious identity, and in extreme cases disguise their belief, obligations, and traditions, to protect themselves from persecution, life-threatening danger, or serious harm.
But one of the characteristics of this first phase is the establishment of Islamic courts, which operate almost secretly, applying Sharia, Islamic law, which contains principles and determinations that violate the very constitution of Western countries - Portugal being a concrete case of such violations, as Sheikh Munir himself explained in an interview with Público. In the second phase - the phase New York is in - the Muslim community, having socialists, communists, and liberals as allies, leads a conquest of municipal power in large cities - London, for example, has a Muslim mayor, among dozens of other cities.
The reason for this political conquest of large cities is essentially related to the fact that Muslims vote in unison for their candidates, guaranteeing victory over a multiplicity of candidates from traditional political forces. The same tactic is employed in electing representatives to the U.S. Congress. The geographic concentration of Muslim communities allows, in the American electoral system, for Muslims to be elected in electoral districts where they are not the majority.
In the state of Minnesota, Ilhan Omar, a native of Somalia, is the representative for the state's 5th Congressional District, serving in Congress since 2019 - an election made possible by the fact that the largest Somali-American population in the United States is concentrated in a district that includes Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs. Another example of this demographic dominance translating into electoral gains is the city of Dearborn, Michigan, with over 55% of its Muslim population, being the first Arab-majority city in the U.S. and, naturally, having a Muslim mayor, Abdullah Hammoud.
The controversy launched by Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani, about the need to ban dogs as pets in New York - now that Islam has arrived in that city - was neither satire nor a joke. Just look at the video that was published on the social network X (the link to which is at the top of this text). It is just another sign that Islamism is, in its essence, a political strategy of power conquest, in order to establish a theocracy based on the Quran and Sharia. This is how the 57 countries that call themselves Muslim countries operate.
One final detail that reveals this strategy: when a non-Muslim adopts this religion, the term used by Muslims is not "conversion." It is said that said non-Muslim has "reverted" to the one and only true religion that exists - this is because one of the fundamental points of Islamism is the conception that all human beings are born Muslim, being "deviated" from the true faith by the education they receive.
In Islam, it is believed that every human being is born in a state of purity and submission to God, known as fitrah. When someone adopts Islam in adulthood, Muslims prefer to say that this person is "reverting" to their original nature and primordial faith, rather than converting to a new religion. There are countless examples of the obligation to which citizens of certain countries are subjected, with the Maldives being one of the most absurd: The Maldives is a 100% Sunni Muslim nation, where Islam is the official religion and its practice is mandatory for citizens, subject to the death penalty if they abandon the religion. Any other religion is prohibited.
Another characteristic to note, to conclude, is the fact that Islamism is the only religion in the entire world whose abandonment is punishable by the death penalty, according to Sharia, Islamic law. Apostasy — leaving Islam — is considered a crime ("hudud") against Allah, punishable by the death penalty and historically supported by the main Sunni and Shia schools of interpretation of the Quran and Sharia.
In Brunei, for example, in 2014, Sharia (Islamic law) was introduced as the main source of legislation, making that country the first in Asia to govern with this system, including punishments such as stoning for cases of adultery and homosexuality.
The truth is that the statements of Palestinian activist Nerdeen Kiswani about dogs being able to "have a place in society, just not as pets inside the home (...) because they are impure," marks the beginning of the second phase of the Islamic conquest of New York.
