This is what I and anyone else would expect but it would not happen in a Christian church would it? I’ve seen cats at Chrisitan churches but not on a priest’s shoulders during a service! It is not uncommon for domestic cats to live in mosques. And clearly this imam is a cat lover and he has a cat companion. Normal stuff. The backdrop to the story is the historical one: the Prophet Mohammad’s love of cats and respect for them.
Here is the video. Please remember that I cannot guarantee it will work in perpetuity! I don’t control its existence. If it has stopped working, sorry.
The prophet’s legacy is what allows this sort of event to happen. There is an unwritten rule that domestic cats can do what they like in a mosque (more or less) and the imam and congregation respect the cat and do what they’d normally do while working around the cat.
Domestic cats in mosques have a good life but looking at the wider world, domestic, stray and feral cats in Muslim countries do not have a better life than in other country in the West. Probably worse as often the animal welfare laws and enforcement is below par.
The ‘Prophet Mohammad effect’ on cat welfare does nothing for the cats in general in countries where the Islam faith is predominant. There is animal cruelty like anywhere else. A bit of a failure that, I’d say. It seems that Muslims often don’t follow the guidance of the Prophet on this particular issue.
This leads to the obvious conclusion that what we are seeing in the video is an imam who has a pet cat. And he likes cats. He wants to be a cat caregiver. He takes advantage of the known acceptance of cats at mosques to allow what we see in the video to happen.
I’d expect the cat to live at the mosque and that there are living quarters at the mosque too.
It is nice to see. I always like to see the cat respected as it shuts out cat abuses. There is an improvement on cat welfare. That’s thanks to the Prophet. His legacy is effective in one way around one thousand five hundred years later.
The history of the domestic cat in relation to Christianity is horrible in stark contrast. I am referring to the hundreds of years of cat persecution in the Middle Ages due to their superstitious belief in witches and the cat being the embodiment of the devil. The legacy of the era is felt today in developing countries such as in some African nations.
