Islamic report: Sharia science proves dogs can’t be kept as pets

Putting aside the Islamic scientific proof that the earth is flat, or that Mecca is the center of the universe, the Islamo-centric information and cultural news portal Islam Online (of Doha, Qatar) has reported on Dec. 21, 2013, that Islamic Sharia Law proves scientifically that humans should never keep dogs as pets. Of the millions of websites on the internet, Islam Online ranks as one of the more widely read information hubs available world-wide.
Their wildly popular Ask the Scholar section tackles the age old question if it's permissible for Muslims to own dogs as pets.
House consultant Yusuf Al-Qaradawi takes a long distance dedication from Muhammad, in which the inquisitive Sharia-complaint Muslim queries:

I heard that Shari`ah disallows keeping dogs without valid reasons? Does science support Shari`ah in this regard?"

Qaradawi cites "the prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi."
In what was described as the Sheikh's "well-known book," The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, the scholar of everything Islam cites an enigmatic German scientist in the person of Dr. Gerard Finstimer.
Unfortunately, with the exception of a handful of Islamic-centered websites also citing the mysterious Herr Doktor, there is precious little of any source of reference to a specific German scientist by the name of Dr. Gerard Finstimer.
What He Said...
Nevertheless, the proof of science supporting Islamic Sharia Law is paragraph after paragraph warning humans not to allow domesticated dogs to lick plates and kitchen utensils "clean" and then for the humans to use them at meals sans a run through the dishwasher.
Quite eye-catching was Sheikh Qaradawi citing the percentage of tapeworms in human digestive tracts.
Referencing a handful of Western nation that keep dogs as pets, Qaradawi states that inflammation from tapeworms in the North Atlantic nation of Iceland "has reached the rate of 43 percent."
Going into gruesome detail, the learned Sheikh warned possible dog owners of the inflammatory consequences they may face by having a pooch on the porch:

In humans and in other animals they appear as lesions and abscesses completely different from the tapeworm itself. In animals the size of an abscess may reach that of an apple, while the liver of the infected animal may grow from five to ten times its normal size. In human beings the size of the abscess may reach that of a clenched fist or even the head of an infant; it is filled with yellow fluid weighing from ten to twenty pounds. In the infected human it may cause diverse kinds of inflammations in the lungs, muscles, spleen, kidneys, and brain, and appears in such different forms that specialists, until very recently, had difficulty in recognizing it.

If lugging around a 20 pound sack of infectious yellow fluid attached to any number of your internal organs isn't your idea of a good time, Qaradawi doubles down by claiming modern medicine has no cure, to include chemotherapy.
Those Sickly Icelanders...
Quite possibly the Sheikh referenced the scientific research book The Flukes and Tapeworms of Cattle, Sheep, and Swine, with Special Reference to the Inspection of Meats written by Dr. Charles W. Stiles of the US Department of Agriculture.
Dr. Stiles noted that tapeworm infection in Iceland very well could be as high as a full one third of the population.
The Icelandic sheep population, that is.
Dr. Stiles' work was published in 1898.
The same year William McKinley occupied the White House, Congress authorized a volunteer force of horse-mounted cavalry to be assigned to the US Army, and the Spanish-American War was fought.