Saturday, July 21, 2007

Five fab fatwas

Five fantastic fatwas that should not be missed.

There's THE fatwa, in 1989, which was the first time most of us had heard the word. There's one against "unclothed sex" for married couples; against Pokémon (which, however absurd, I would instinctively support having had to sit through Pokémon 2000 with a five-year-old); against the Polio vaccine.

But Top of the Top Five is that concerning breast-feeding. This is emblematic, I think, of the strain put on Islam by the modern world, a strain that is relieved in other contexts by less ... fulsome means.

It concerns the difficulty of men and women forced into the close proximity of the office by modern work. How can they be left alone together? Can she ever reveal her hair to a male colleague? Well, yes. If she has breast-fed him. Five times. According to Ezzat Atiya, a lecturer at Cairo’s al-Azhar University. This was evidently a practice during the Prophet Mohammed's time, which just goes to show how far-sighted he was.

(via Instapundit)

No comments: