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Al-Azhar University, one of Sunni Islam’s most prestigious
institutions, ordered one of its clerics Monday to face a disciplinary
panel after he issued a controversial decree allowing adults to
breast-feed.
Ezzat Attiya had issued a fatwa, or religious edict,
saying adult men could breast-feed from female work colleagues as a way
to avoid breaking Islamic rules that forbid men and women from being
alone together.
In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a
degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not
biologically hers. It means the child could not marry the nursing
woman’s biological children.
Attiya - the head of Al-Azhar’s Department of
Hadith, or teachings of the Prophet Muhammad - insisted the same would
apply with adults. He argued that if a man nursed from a co-worker, it
would establish a family bond between them and allow the two to work
side-by-side without raising suspicion of an illicit sexual relation.
Weird Fatwa of the Day
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