Saudi male breastfeeding saga continues 14, June 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in Islam, Saudi Arabia.Tags: Breastfeeding, Crazy fatwa, Egyptian breastfeeding fatwa, Islam fatwa, Saudi breastfeeding, Saudi breastfeeding fatwa, Silly fatwa
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No, the title is not one long typo. It is instead an end product of institutionalized literalism at the expense of analysis, reason and education that one finds in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Several months ago, a Saudi cleric, Sheikh Al Obeikan, was discussing a fatwa from an Egyptian ‘scholar’ studying at the Arab world’s best and most revered University, the Al Azhar, which decreed that men who regularly come into contact with women who are not close/blood relations ought to drink some of their breast milk to make the situation less ‘haram‘/wrong.
Al Obeikah, who is an adviser to the royal court and a consultant (!) to the Ministry of Justice, agreed with the Egyptian fatwa. However, in the interest of good taste and decency he did say that men did not need to suckle directly at the breast of the woman and that it was perfectly legitimate for the woman to give the man a cup of her breast milk to drink: quite the 21st century man.
All men that lived in the same house as a woman or those that regularly ‘come into contact with a woman’ must drink her juice, he decreed. But not male drivers who are, for some reason or other (no doubt a wholly racist one), exempt from mandatory breast milk imbibition: another form of discrimination for them to cope with.
However, aghast at the barbarism and modern thinking of the reckless Al Obeikan, Abi Isaq Al Huwaini decreed that such men must literally suckle at the breast directly. This prompted a thirsty pervert of a bus driver in Saudi Arabia to demand a suck, so to speak, off a regular female passenger.
Hat tip: MT
The Gulf blog 
Just for precision sake, I personally listened to Al Huwaini’s talk on the issue. Though Al Huwaini (rightfully) said that suckling or breastfeeding, at least in religious terms, involves suckling at the breast directly, he disagreed with the fatwa and dismissed its applicability. His discussion of whether or not breastfeeding is at the breast directly was more of a jurisprudential discussion than a discussion of how the fatwa should be applied today.