Islamic 'Adult Breastfeeding' Fatwas Return :: Middle East Forum

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.

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Islamic 'Adult Breastfeeding' Fatwas Return :: Middle East Forum