news details |
|
|
| Adult breastfeeding prescription from Muslim scholar | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, May 29: The term 'fatwa' is often made use of in places and countries with the presence of a substantial number of Muslims. Now a fatwa has come from a scholar in Cairo's Al-Azhar University. It is con sidered to be the world's leading Suni university. A fatwa by an Islamic scholar permitting women to breastfeed adults with whom they work has culminated in his suspension from the university.
The scholar has been identifed as Dr Izzat Atiyaa. According to a report in The Australian, Dr Atiyaa had issued the fatwa as a way around the prohibition in Islamic religious law against a woman working in private premises with a man who was not her close relative. Breastfeeding, he argued, would create a familial relationship under Islamic law. Dr Atiyaa explained to the Egyptian newspaper al-Watani al-Yawm: “A man and a woman who are alone together are not (necessarily) having sex but this possibility exists and breastfeeding provides a solution to this problem (by) transforming the bestial relationship between two people into a religious relationship based on (religious) duties”.
In Islamic tradition, breastfeeding at infancy establishes a degree of familial relationship between nurse and child even if there is no biological relationship. Dr Atiyaa argued in his fatwa that if an adult male was nursed by a female co-worker it would likewise establish a familial bond that would permit them to work side by side without raising suspicion of illicit sex. Dr Atiyaa headed Al-Azhar University’s department dealing with hadith. He said he had based his ruling on one such tradition according to which, at the Prophet’s order, a man named Salem was breastfed by the wife of another disciple.
“The fact that the hadith regarding the breastfeeding of an adult is inconceivable to the mind does not make it invalid”, Dr Atiyaa said, in defending his ruling. “Rejecting it is tantamount to questioning the Prophet’s tradition”, he was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, his ruling evoked almost universal rejection among Muslim scholars and in the popular Egyptian press. Al-Azhar University formed a committee of hadith experts, who dismissed his ruling, and the university administration ordered him to publish a retraction. He complied.
However, his apology was deemed insufficient by the head of the Al-Azhar Supreme Council, Sheik Muhammed Sayyid Tantawi, a widely respected figure who is the highest spiritual authority in Sunni Islam. “There is enough chaos with all the unsupervised fatwas (published) on satellite channels”, he said. “We will never permit this chaos to spread to the religious establishment and to al-Azhar”. Following his remarks, the university decided to suspend Dr Atiyaa, pending further investigation.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
