Trying to grab attention at any cost in a saturated digital environment can be costly. A Moroccan influencer has been behind bars for a week in El Arjat prison, on the outskirts of Rabat, after posting a video on YouTube in which he dismembered and cooked a stray dog before eating its roasted meat during the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice (at the end of May).
The YouTuber, Ayub ben Nesnes, 26, intended to protest the high price of sheep destined for ritual sacrifice. He has been charged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office with offenses against Islam and animal cruelty. A wave of outrage has erupted on social media against this content creator with 2.2 million followers, while Islamic preachers and animal rights activists demand exemplary punishment for the irreverent dog-eater.
More than 200,000 people viewed the video of the grilled dog on YouTube before Ben Nesnes erased all traces of it from the internet amid public anger over the “repugnant images.” In a carefully staged performance, the provocative influencer appeared on screen preparing and butchering the animal as an “Eid al-Adha sacrifice” to grill and eat its meat. He later showed another video as an alibi, claiming he had found the animal dead in a ditch after it had been hit by a car.
“Animal abuse cannot be reduced to a simple video for social media,” the Moroccan Society for the Protection of Animals and Nature warned in a statement. “This animal was not meant for sacrifice. Digital content that offends believers has been trivialized,” declared the renowned Islamic preacher Hamza al-Jalidi on social media, stigmatizing dog meat as haram, or forbidden, in contrast to halal, or permissible under Islamic law, for other animals.
Wanted by police for allegedly desecrating the Muslim religion and dismembering a dog, the influencer was located last week in the city of Martil (Río Martín, during the Spanish Protectorate of northern Morocco), 40 kilometers south of Ceuta.
He assured them that he had not killed the dog. In his defense, he claimed that he was forced to forgo sacrificing a lamb for Eid due to the high cost of sheep, with prices reaching double the Moroccan minimum wage (around 300 euros per month) at livestock markets.
