A Muslim cleric in Iran, Sayed Mahdi Tabatabaei, posts regularly — to his more than 80,000 followers — about abused and neglected dogs that he has rescued off the streets and treated in his shelter in defiance of a local taboo against dogs.
Iranian cleric Sayed Mahdi Tabatabaei looks at stray dogs outside his shelter as they are being fed, outside the city of Qom, 80 miles south of the capital Tehran, Iran, Sunday, May 21, 2023. It's rare these days for a turbaned cleric in Iran to attract a large following of adoring young fans on Instagram, but Tabatabaei has done it by rescuing street dogs in defiance of a local taboo.
QOM, Iran — It’s rare these days for a turbaned cleric in Iran to attract a large following of adoring young fans on Instagram, but Sayed Mahdi Tabatabaei has done it by rescuing street dogs in defiance of a local taboo. Tabatabaei posts regularly — to his more than 80,000 followers — heartbreaking stories of abused and neglected dogs that he has treated in his shelter. His young fans ask for updates on the rescues and send well wishes in the hundreds of comments he receives on almost every post. In some parts of the Muslim world, dogs are considered unclean, driven away with shouting, sticks and stones, and sometimes even shot by city workers in failed attempts to control the feral population. Iran’s ruling theocracy views keeping dogs as pets as a sign of Western decadence, and hard-liners have been pushing for laws that would prohibit walking them in public.
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