What you didn’t know about …Ezzat Atiyya issued a fatwa that suggested women should allow their male colleagues to breast feed in order to limit sexual harassment. – Bikya Masr
CAIRO: Breast feeding. Yes, breast feeding, was the cause for controversy after Al-Azhar University lecturer Ezzat Atiyya issued a fatwa that suggested women should allow their male colleagues to breast feed in order to limit sexual harassment. “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.”
Of course, it sparked outrage from conservative and liberal Muslims alike. They questioned the sanity of the religious scholar and demanded a retraction. After being threatened with disciplinary action by the university, Atiyya finally retracted, arguing the fatwa was “a bad interpretation of a particular case” during the time of Mohammad and that it was based on the opinions of only a minority of scholars.
The resulting controversy led Egypt’s minister of religious affairs, Mahmoud Zaqzouq, has called for future fatwas to “be compatible with logic and human nature.”
via What you didn’t know about the Islamic fatwa – Bikya Masr.
