Two bans, two systems, one logic: the state intervenes in the most private refuge of the human being—and the public remains silent.

At the core of both bans ultimately stands the same presumption: that a human institution—be it a revolutionary regime or a bureaucracy—claims the right to separate us from God’s Creation.

In june 2025, Iranian authorities extended the ban on public dog walking, in force in Tehran since 2019, to at least 18 additional cities, including Isfahan, Kerman, and Ilam. As justification, the state newspaper Iran cited the protection of “public order, hygiene, and security.” Vehicles in which dogs are transported may since then be confiscated for up to three months. Landlords were called upon not to rent their apartments to dog or cat owners.

And then the European Commission updated its Union list of invasive alien species. It includes more than 40 plant species that may no longer be imported, traded, cultivated, or released into the environment in any EU member state. Anyone who violates this risks, under the German Federal Nature Conservation Act, fines of up to 50,000 euros. Among those affected are, inter alia, Japanese knotweed, water lettuce, and popular ornamental plants from garden centers.

Two justifications, one structure

The justifications could hardly be more different. In Iran, the dog is pseudo-religiously coded: since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, it has been regarded by many clerics as ritually impure. The then police chief, General Ahmadi Moghadam, put it succinctly in 2011: “We are an Islamic society, and dogs are impure animals. They must not appear in the street scene.” Since then, the regime has attempted to curb, by legislative means, the growing trend toward pet ownership—especially among young urban residents.

In the EU, the language is different, yet the structure comparable: biodiversity, ecosystem stability, obligation of prevention. Regulation No. 1143/2014 and its subsequent acts are factually grounded—invasive species such as Japanese knotweed demonstrably cause ecological damage. However, the list is continuously expanded, transition periods are narrow, and communication to hobby gardeners scarcely takes place. The average consumer typically learns of a prohibition only once already affected.

No Quranic foundation

The religious justification of the ban does not withstand examination of the sacred Text. In the Holy Quran, the dog is by no means considered an impure animal. On the contrary: in Surah al-Kahf, The Cave, the 18th Surah, a dog shares the cave with the pious youths—it sleeps with them, is mentioned alongside them, belongs among them. The Quran does not name it as a deficiency, yet as a companion. The classification of the dog as ritually impure does not derive from the Quran itself, yet from certain hadith reports—fabricated attributions ascribed to the Prophet—and their interpretation by conservative legal schools remains disputed among Muslim scholars to this day. That the Iranian regime elevates this interpretation to raison d’état therefore has less to do with Islam than with control. The actual subtext of the ban is another, and the authorities sometimes state it openly: pets, especially dogs in urban apartments, are regarded as signs of a Western lifestyle. The ban is not an animal protection law and not a religious command—it is cultural policy.

Silence is the actual problem

Both measures passed largely without comment through public discourse. The Iranian dog ban was briefly registered internationally—as a curiosity, as another sign of an authoritarian regime—and then disappeared again. The EU plant list appears, if at all, in gardening magazines, not in political leading articles.

This is remarkable. For in both cases the state intervenes in domains commonly regarded as private: the animal in the living room, the plant in the garden. The question of who may decide this—the state or the individual—is a fundamental political question. It is not posed here.

In the case of Iran, the silence can still be explained by geopolitical distance: different system, different rules. This explanation, however, falls short. For behind the ban stand people who nevertheless continue to walk their dogs for years—because the regime does not consistently enforce its own laws, as Western media report. The silence of the international public does not change the situation of these people.

In the case of the EU, the silence is more difficult to justify. The regulation applies in all 27 member states. It affects millions of hobby gardeners. It provides for significant penalties. And yet: no public debate, no parliamentary confrontation of weight, no campaign by affected associations extending beyond specialist journals.

When bureaucracy neutralizes resistance

The difference between the Iranian and the European ban lies not only in the justification, yet also in the form. Tehran issues police orders. Brussels publishes implementing regulations with transitional periods and exception clauses.

This form is not neutral. It is depoliticizing. A police order provokes—it names an authority against which one can position oneself. An implementing regulation for the “updating of the Union list of invasive alien species of Union-wide significance” does not do so. It dissolves into administrative language before outrage can arise. The more technical the language, the lower the outcry.

What connects both

It would be wrong to place Iran and the EU in the same category. The systems are fundamentally different; the proportionality of the interventions is not comparable; the possibility of resistance even less so.

What they share is the mechanism of public reaction—or more precisely: its absence. In both cases, a measure was enacted that intervenes in the everyday life of millions of people. In both cases, there was no broad public debate. In both cases, the ban normalized itself before it was even discussed.

This is the actual topic: not the ban, yet the silence upon.

No life is illegal

At the core of both bans ultimately stands the same presumption: that a human institution—be it a revolutionary regime or a bureaucracy—claims the right to separate us from God’s Creation. The dog, the plant, the animal—they were not created by parliaments and are not at their disposal. Whoever declares a living being illegal thereby implicitly declares themselves more powerful than the One Who created it. This is a theological as well as a political hubris. No law in the world can render a plant unlawful. No decree can declare a dog a threat to public order without ridiculing the order that is older than any state. No life is illegal—and no human being has the right to declare it so. Only God, the Creator, has Authority over His Creation. The rest is sinful power politics, against which sacred Scripture explicitly warns.

By Okay Altinisik | 3-6-2026, 10:36:52