Iran’s religious leaders want to stamp out the increasingly fashionable practice of keeping dogs as pets, citing Islamic tradition that brands man’s best friend as “unclean.” So they have banned all advertising of pets, pet food and pet products. Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi pronounced that that dog owners were “blindly imitating the West” and that “many people in the West love their dogs more than their wives and children.” This love of pets would result in “evil outcomes,” though keeping animals as guard dogs is fine. And not all animals are a target of Tehran. Since the Prophet Muhammad owned a pet cat, named Muezza, Iranians are free to live with cats and they must treat them well.