The Daily Mail reports:
Senior clerics fighting for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have issued a diktat banning pigeon breeding as they claim the sight of the birds’ genitals as they fly overhead is offensive to Islam.
Jihadis operating in the group’s ’Euphrates province’, which stretches from Anbar in Iraq to Dier ez Zour in Syria, told pigeon breeders they had one week to stop the practice or face public flogging.
And later in the article:
When rumours of an ISIS ban on pigeons began to circulate earlier this year, it was widely assumed that it was related to the birds being used to either smuggle anti-ISIS messages or cigarettes.
However the new document clears up that misunderstanding, clearly stating that the ban is intended ‘to put a stop to the greater criminal act of harming one’s Muslim and Muslim women neighbours, revealing the [pigeon’s] genitals and wasting time.’
Last January, ISIS executed three boys for raising pigeons. So you can rape and enslave little girls, but don’t you dare look at a pigeon’s junk.
Note: My understanding is that pigeons don’t actually have male dangly bits. Which makes the whole aversion to pigeon genitals even weirder. Still, one can wait a lifetime for an opportunity to write a headline like that. So indulge me.