New York, Islam and Why Every Dog will Still Have its Day

The recent row on X between Nerdier Kiswani and Congressman Randy Fine over dogs in New York City shows how the notion of a shared American culture has gone to the dogs.

Too busy redistributing other people’s money, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani didn’t get around to clearing the record snowfall that fell on the city in the beginning of the month. When it melted, the dog droppings, previously dislodged in the snow, littered the sidewalks—gross! New Yorkers were understandably outraged. Mamdani’s ally Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime, the NGO implicated in the antizionist encampments that sprang up on the college campuses following the 2023 Simchat Torah massacre in southern Israel, offered her solution to the problem in a post on Twitter/X:

That tweet didn’t go over well. The post received 2.2K likes for 3.4 million views—over 15 times below the minimum desired 1:100 ratio—and more than three times as many comments than likes. The Florida Congressman Randy Fine fired up off a response to Kiswani. It was controversial to be sure, but more viral—46 million accounts saw his post of which 136K “liked” it, with likes outnumbering comments more than sixfold. It read:

Democrats immediately threatened to censure the lawmaker citing Islamophobia. The combative MAGA Zionist might have been serious, but he did a variation on the old “the more I learn about people, the more I love my dog” joke—or was it a joke? Kiswani, on the other hand, claimed that she was joking in her original post about the canines, but was she?

Islamic cultures view dogs as unclean, and bar them from entering homes. Stray dogs are treated terribly. For instance, in 2022, the majority Arab city of Hebron in Judea offered 20 Israeli shekels for every slaughtered stray dog. Moreover, ahead of the 2030 World Cup, it was recently announced that the host nation of Morocco is planning on culling three million unsheltered pooches. An ordinary American naturally shudders just thinking about such a travesty.

There is a reason why the clash with Islamism is more profound in the U.S. than elsewhere in the West: dog ownership rates in the U.S. are significantly higher than in Western Europe, where Islamic migrants have been settling in large numbers over the last few decades. The coming conflict in America is not a product of different aesthetics or even mores, but the very principles underlying the social organization of society.

According to the 2025 survey conducted by the American Pet Product Association, 51 percent of U.S. households include a pup, making it the most popular domestic companion. Although the American Veterinary Medicine Association put the number much lower, at 42.6 percent, they note that dog ownership skyrocketed from an estimated 52.9 million in 1996 to 87.3 today. By comparison, in the United Kingdom, the nation reputed for canine ownership, the rate is estimated to be between 31 percent and 36 percent. In France, the figure is lower still—just 29 percent.

Partnership with a dog complements the family structure perfectly. Family is the basic unit of society, and in America this unit is the nuclear family—or, if one wants to geek out further—the extreme nuclear family. The term, proposed by James C. Bennet and Michael J. Lotus in their 2012 book “America 3.0,” describes a mobile and individualistic household made of parents and minor children only. In about half of the cases, they failed to mention that a dog is a beloved appendage to this dynamic and prosperous outfit.

First, there is the issue of the living quarters. A four-legged guard is a practical feature of family homesteads. Americans correctly believe that dogs deter burglars, making them an essential element of family autonomy in relatively dispersed suburban or rural settings. At the same time, the square footage of a typical stand-alone dwelling can comfortably accommodate multiple pets. This type of arrangement is not easily replicable in most urban environments in Western Europe.

It’s a common stereotype that Americans may be closer to nature than the Europeans. We certainly hike and garden more. But we also take a formerly wild beast and make it an ordinary member of our household—we even give it our surnames.

This turns a pet into a quasi-child, the function most conspicuous among single urban adults. San Francisco, where the cost of raising a child is prohibitively high and the lifestyle is aligned with the grownup pursuit of pleasure, has long been the most notorious example of this trend. Despite the relatively high population density, which in theory should disincentivize dog ownership in favor of smaller and more low maintenance pets, more dogs than children live in the Golden Gate City. Many other large metro areas, including several borrows in Mamdani’s New York are no different.

It’s easy to ridicule the habits of the affluent and perpetually unattached professionals. Take, for instance, the episode of the comedy show Portlandia in which the character played by Carrie Brownstein gives up on romance and adopts a difficult pit bull, dreaming of the day she can wow her friends with her accomplishments in obedience training. It may be one of the shows funniest skits—and it acknowledges the painful reality that dog ownership serves to fill a void in the emotional lives of urban singles. Ironically, this is the demographic is most likely to vote for candidates like Mamdani.

Where loneliness is not an issue, dogs completes the family. Some couples adopt a puppy prior to childbearing—they often talk about raising a dog as “practice” for having kids. Others delay the step of having dogs until the kids are old enough to learn responsibility and leadership skills from interacting with the critter. In either case, it puts the “fur baby” on almost near equal footing with children.

Admittedly, we Americans are kind of nuts about our “fur babies.” As the proliferation of doggie daycare centers—some equipped with child monitors and offering meditation classes—attests, we pay top dollar to indulge in what can be described as anthropomorphic pet fantasies. These excesses aside, humans have the tendency to be “over the top”sentimental about our pets. When American social media erupted in furry at Kiswani’s comment, some noted that dogs got more sympathy than Jews—the Arab American activist has been screeching about globalizing intifada for years, and it has hardly raised an eyebrow. But go after dogs—and you’ll receive an earful.

There is something about this trusty animal that fills our hearts with emotion. It’s like a child, but even more so—a child who is simultaneously very useful and utterly dependent. But it will never grow up to fulfill the natural lifecycle by taking care of aging parents. In any event, a failure to defend such a vulnerable soul is felt deeply and personally.

To an American, the choice between dogs and Muslims—or Jews for that matter—is an easy one. We lived without Islam within our borders for nearly a quarter millennium. To live without dogs, on the other hand, would require a major adjustment for many American households—and an utter nightmare for the lonely and the widowed. It would require a massive rethinking of the family formation and our current standard living arrangements.

Socialist politicians argue that Americans should care for their neighbors regardless of their ethnicity, religion, immigration status, or criminal history. There is an argument to be made about that, yet the most intimate bonds are not between neighbors, but between members of a household, and those include the very first specie to be domesticated—dogs.

Photo Credits- Instagram, First Coast News, X, Dreamtime and Pinterest.