Why Did Egyptians Tie and Behead a Dog as Onlookers Watched? · Global Voices
Tarek Amr

This dog was “slaughtered” in a public beheading in Egypt. On Twitter, @ahmedadel755 remarks: “This is the faithful dog and this is his treacherous dirty owner.”
News of the public “slaughtering” of a dog in a busy Cairo neighbourhood as onlookers watched has sent shock waves around the world, with many questioning how people have become this violent, and why no one stopped the grisly act caught on video.
Cherine Kendous posted a summary for what happened:
The owner of the dog had a fight with other people. The dog then defended its owner and bit one of the other people, who made a complaint in the police station afterwards. The dog's owner was then sentenced to a year in jail. He thus wanted to reach an agreement with the attacked person, so they decided that they will drop the lawsuit if he handed the dog over to them for them to take revenge their way. They tied the dog in a pole and attacked it by knives and slaughtered it.
Zeinobia wrote about the story and posted the video of what happened. The video was removed later on from Facebook for being graphical.
The brothers asked for one thing: To kill the dog in front of everybody in the street so they could restore their pseudo-prestige after being humiliated by a dog. The dog’s owner agreed and we had that video.
Social media reacted to the incident with anger, some criticising the lack of law and order that has driven people to take such actions. Nirvana Said tweets:
In a so called country were there are no laws no police to protect, pets are being slaughtered in z str. #elahram_st_dog #egypt @peta
— Nirvana سعيد (@NirvanaSaid) February 25, 2015
And Maryse Matthew shares a quote:
“The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”-Gandhi الرسالة وصلت #كلب_شارع_الاهرام“
— Maryse Matthew :) (@Maryse_Matta) February 26, 2015
Yet, the question remains, why people are becoming this violent?
Beesan Kassab blamed it on the custom of bringing children to watch the slaughter of sheep in Eid Al-Adha feast:
طب ما هو مؤگد فيه كم رهيب من البشر مستغربين ليه فيه كم اقل مصدومين من قصة ذبح الكلب ، اذا كانوا بيجيبوا عيالهم يتفرجوا على دبح خروف العيد؟ بالنسبة لحد بيشوف المشهد ده وهو طفل اكيد المسألة هتبقى ابسط لما يكبر…زي ما فيه اطفال اهاليهم بيعلموهم يصطادوا العصافير للتسلية بس،ولما حد يفتح بقه لازم اسطوانة ” ركزوا والنبي في البني ادمين الاول” تشتغل ، تقولش حضرته اللي بيتكلم كارل ماركس اسم الله
If they bring their children to watch the sheep while being slaughtered in the feast? For someone who watches such a scene while being a child, of course, he will be accustomed to the thing when he grows up. Like the parents who let their children shoot birds for fun. And whenever someone complains about these, they are faced with responses like “lets focus on human rights first”.
Actually, Fatima Said's tweet is a good demonstration for Beesan's last sentence.
Priorities: When people are more outraged at the brutal killing of a dog than humans being tortured to death…. #Egypt
— Fatima Said (@fattysaid) February 26, 2015
This particular Eid Al-Adha custom has been discussed a lot, especially after a Saudi 3-year-old child stabbed his sister after being influenced by the slaughtering rituals.
On the other hand, Ehab Kamel draws his own lines between this incident and what happened to some people in Egypt a couple of years ago, for having different religious beliefs than their neighbours. He wrote:
فيديو تعذيب و قتل و التمثيل بجثة الكلب ليس بعيدا عن ما حدث للشيخ حسن شحاتة منذ مدة و ليس غريبا عن السلوك العام لهذا المجتمع فنحن في الإطار العام و في المجمل مجموعة من ال Psychopaths أو السيكوباتيين التي عانت لفترة طويلة جدا من ال Passive Aggression أو العنف السلبي أو المكبوت و لذا و بعد عقود بدأ يظهر هذا العنف المكبوت على السطح في شكل إنحراف حاد و شبق و شهوة لا تنطفئ تجاه القتل و التلذذ بالدم و التعذيب ، فنحن بصدد مجتمع بأكمله في حالة متأخرة من المرض النفسي ، جدير بالذكر أننا نتيجة التجريف و التحريف و التجديف الذي مورس علينا من جانب أنفسنا و إستسلمنا له بالتوحد معه صرنا مجتمع بلا قيم بلا أخلاق بلا هدف بلا قضية بلا عقيدة بلا عقد إجتماعي بلا نسق أو نظام ……..
The video of torturing and killing the dog is not that distant from what happened to Sheikh Hassan Shehata a while back. It is not strange from the general behaviour of the society. We are generally a group of psychopaths who suffered for a long while from passive aggression and it started to come to the surface after decades now, in the form of non stoppable lust towards killing and torturing and blood. We are in front of a society in a late stage of psychological illness. It is worth saying that, as a result of the distortion that been exerted on this society, we surrendered to it and face a society with no values, no morals, no goals, no social contract nor any form of system.
So, the question remains. Is this violence due to some social customs or is it the result of the oppression exerted on the people by their regime?
I better end this article by a quote for Paulo Freire.
Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence; to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.
This incident has reportedly taken place four days ago, and three men have been arrested in connection with the crime.