No country for dogs but Syed Azmi wanted to prove otherwise

A video showing Malaysians treating a blind man and his guide dog badly spurred activist Syed Azmi Alhabshi to hold the controversial "I want to touch a dog" event that outraged many Malays, who felt it was an insult to Islam.

Syed Azmi said he was affected by the video clip when he realised people were rude towards the blind man because of the dog.

"In the video, people were shoo-ing the dog and the blind man, and that hurt me a lot because we also have projects with the blind and to be treated like that just because he was different, that hurt me.

"I asked myself, will I act differently, will I save the blind man? I don't know because I am afraid of dogs," he said to a question from the audience at the "acceptance v conventional sensitivity: where is the middle ground?" forum organised by Umno Youth last night.

Some 200 people, mostly Muslims, were at the forum which was also attended by Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin and the wing's exco member and Islamic scholar Dr Fathul Bari Mat Jahya.

Many questions were thrown at Syed Azmi from the floor, but mostly on "why did you do it?", "did you prepare gloves at the event" and "who's advice did you seek before organising the event".

Syed Azmi sounded apologetic but the situation did not get out of hand. No anger was shown towards him.

He said while watching the video, he realised many people were ignorant and did not understand about dogs.

He then wrote on his Facebook page "I think I want to touch a dog because I don't understand this concept or this issue in Malaysia" and subsequently, he received a lot of comments and feedback.

That he said, got him and his team to come up with the idea of organising the "I want to touch a dog" event, which was aimed at educating and helping people overcome their fear of dogs and learn compassion for all animals, which Islam teaches.

The October 19 event in Bandar Utama, Petaling Jaya, attracted about 1,000 Malaysians, and many took the opportunity to touch and pet dogs of various breeds, while volunteers demonstrated how the cleansing ritual was done according to Islamic rites.

Despite obtaining approval from the state religious authorities and inviting an ustaz to give a talk on Islam’s views on dogs, Syed Azmi drew flak from many Malays, who felt it was an insult to Islam.

His detractors circulated his mobile phone number on the Internet, urging the public to harass him.

He has also been the subject of death threats online, and has been accused of apostasy, of being a Christian in disguise, and of attempting to spread a new religion among Muslims
in Malaysia.

Last Saturday, Syed Azmi apologised for the furore, adding that he did not intend to insult Muslims but only wanted to educate society to overcome their fear of dogs.

At last night's forum, he again apologised for the fallout from the event and said he did not anticipate that overexcited attendees would carry and hug the dogs.

"Just like me, we expected people to be afraid of dogs. What we did not expect – we were so naive – was that some of them got 'syiok' and overexcited after touching the dogs because they were so cute that they carried and hugged the animals.

"We wanted people to overcome their fears, we never expected it to sway from our original aim of educating people and I apologise for that."

Dr Fathul Bari said although Islam was a religion that promoted discussions and respected differences, he advised the organisers of the event to be more careful in the future and to ensure conventional sensitivities were adhered to.

"Those who criticised on Facebook, please do not react so quickly," he said.

Khairy said in the greater scheme of things, the event was a small matter but what was not small was the reaction of Muslims.

That was why he was supportive of last night's forum, which he felt was needed for people to discuss the issue in a rationale manner instead of resorting to threats.

"What kind of society do we have that some has to resort to death threats? This is not the Islamic way. You do not manage disagreements by telling people you want to slap or kill them or that you don't belong to this country." – October 31, 2014.