THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIV, Issue # 75, April 12, 2012
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ISLAMIC BREASTFEEDING FATWAS RETURN
By Raymond Ibrahim
ISLAM & THE STRICTURES OF SHARIA LAW: RECENT FATWAS LEGITIMIZING ADULT BREASTFEEDING & CALLS FOR DESTRUCTION OF ALL CHURCHES IN
MUSLIM LANDS -- THE COMMON SOURCE: MUHAMMAD & HIS TEACHINGS
FULL STORY:
Back in May, 2007, Dr. Izzat Atiya, head of Al-Azhar University's Department of Hadith, issued a fatwa, or Islamic legal decree, saying that female workers should
"breastfeed" their male co-workers in order to work in each other's company. According to the BBC:
He said that, if a woman fed a male colleague "directly from her breast" at least five times they would establish a family bond and thus be allowed to be alone
together at work. "Breast feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage," he ruled. "A woman at work can take off
the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breastfed."
Atiya based his fatwa on a hadith — a documented saying or doing of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and subsequently one of Sharia law's sources of jurisprudence.
Many Egyptians naturally protested this decree — hadith or no hadith — though no one could really demonstrate how it was un-Islamic; for the fatwa conformed
to the strictures of Islamic jurisprudence. Still, due to the protests — not many Egyptian women were eager to "breastfeed" their male coworkers — the fatwa
receded, and that was that.
However, because it was never truly rebutted, it kept making comebacks.
For instance, three years later in 2010, a high-ranking Saudi, Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-Abaican issued a fatwa confirming that "women could give their milk to men
to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women." But unlike Atiya's fatwa, "the man
should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman. He should drink it [from a cup] and then [he] becomes a relative of the family, a fact that allows
him to come in contact with the women without breaking Islam's rules about mixing."
Now, a report titled "Kuwaiti Activists: Husband Breastfeeding from Wife not Prohibited," published earlier this month by Arabic RT (see also Garaa
News) opens by announcing that "The adult breastfeeding fatwa has returned once again to the spotlight, after Kuwaiti Islamic activists supported the adult
breastfeeding fatwa issued by the Egyptian Salafi, Sheikh Jamal al-Murakbi [different from Al Azhar's Sheikh Atiya]. This time around, the Kuwaitis examined the
adult breastfeeding fatwa in the context of relations between a man and his wife."
While the Kuwaiti sheikhs all essentially agree that the activity is not strictly forbidden according to Sharia — only "disliked" (literally makruh) — they are divided
over the particulars:
Sheikh Nazim Misbahi, head of the Fatwa Committee of the Islamic Heritage Revival Society in Kuwait, supports the decree, agreeing that "it is not forbidden
[haram] for a man to breastfeed from his wife."
Sheikh Bassam al-Shatti, a Sharia professor, specifies: "If the husband deliberately sucks to obtain milk from the breast of his wife, this is forbidden; however, if it
happens unintentionally during foreplay with his wife, then there is no problem — though it is disliked, according to the four schools" of Sharia.
Sheikh Sa'd al-Anzi stressed that "if the man, while being intimate with his wife, sucks her nipples, it is nothing, considered foreplay; but if the milk reaches his
mouth, he should spit out — even if goes down in his stomach," i.e., vomit.
Consider for a moment the significance of these Islamic edicts: whether women "breastfeeding" coworkers (Egyptian fatwa, 2007), whether men drinking female
breast-milk in a cup (Saudi fatwa, 2010), or whether Kuwaiti minutiae concerning bedroom foreplay — all these fatwas are reminders of the inescapable strictures
of Sharia law; while these sheikhs offers various circumstances and interpretations concerning "adult breastfeeding," they are all confined to the words of the
Prophet of Islam.
This is precisely why, despite all the claims that Islam is perpetually being "misunderstood" — by terrorists, by "Islamophobes" — understanding what Islam
commands and forbids is actually quite a simple matter: along with the Koran, determine what the Prophet said in canonical hadiths.
It is, after all, no coincidence that the above mentioned Kuwaitis, like Sheikh Misbahi, were members of the delegation that recently went to ask Saudi Arabia's
Grand Mufti about Islam's position on churches in the Arabian Peninsula: the same source that compelled the Grand Mufti to declare that all churches must be
destroyed, is the same source that advocates "adult breastfeeding": Muhammad and his teachings. All very straightforward, really.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Raymond Ibrahim, a historian of Islam, Islamism and the Middle East, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom
Center, an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum, a guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College, and
the editor of The Al-Qa'ida Reader, a collection of tranlations of key texts and documents of the Islamist movement.
Ibrahim's translations of the religious texts and political propaganda comprising this collection help readers comprehend
the origins, development, history, and serious danger of the Islamist war doctrines of Usama bin Laden and Ayman
al-Zawahiri, the Founders of Al-Qa'ida.
The foregoing article by Raymond Ibrahim was originally published in Jihad Watch, April 12, 2012, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/3211/islamic-adult-breastfeeding-fatwas )
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
April 12, 2012
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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