A few weeks ago I posted on a bizarre fatwa having to do with adult breast feeding. At the time it was kind of a joke, and I wasn't totally sure that it was even a real story (though I did check for multiple sources). Well, today The New York Times has this up: Egypt's Muslims Seek Fatwas on a Variety of Issues:
First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties. Then came the urine fatwa. It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.
But that's really not offensive at all compared to this:
Their 9-year-old son's clothing was clean, his hair gelled, his smile bright. The man explained that they had adopted the child when he was 9 months old, and that they had just heard that under Islam their son had to be put out of the house, because the mother had not given birth to him or breast-fed him.He would reach puberty as an outsider, and could not, technically, be around the woman he knew as his mother. The imam at their local mosque said it was haram -- forbidden under Islam -- to live with the boy.
The sheik said yes, that was right, that the boy could not live with them. The father leaned in, disturbed, and said, "And that's it."
Sometimes I really can understand why Denis Diderot said, "Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." That being said, it isn't just the clerics who are to blame, it is human psychology, for these parents believe that these men are the fonts from which the word of God issues. Their heart tells them what is true, but their religion tells them what they must do.
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That's an interesting idea-- that the (evolved) emotional system of these people coupled to the cognitive resources that they generally have predisposes them to feel and act in ways in ways that correspond with the theology of the religion they practice.
well, i wouldn't say theology really. this is what i'm getting at: i'm an atheist, i don't believe in god. giving up your child because they aren't related by blood and you didn't breast feed them and unrelated people of the opposite gender can't live together unless they're married is just nuts. but, these people believe in god. they also believe in social institutions which derive from this god. the social institutions themselves are buffered by incentive structures (shame, honor, etc.). now, on the one hand, they do love this child. on the other hand, they have all these sincere beliefs and social structures pulling at them. the various vectors sum up, and you get a net result. i hope that in the end they don't ditch their kid, or, more likely i wouldn't be surprised if they followed the letter of the law somehow.
anyway, my point is that these people aren't insane. they are where they are because of the nature of both human psychology and society, at least in their modal manifestations.
wait...if adult breast feeding is OK for forming this fictional non-sexual bond, why not attempt to breastfeed this adopted child. Sometimes I think people are just looking for an excuse.
The urine drinking thing reminded me of one of India's former prime ministers who used to practise and advocate it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urophagia#Alternative_medicine.2FPractices
There's no dearth of idiocy anywhere.
It was Jean Meslier, not Denis Diderot.
It was Jean Meslier, not Denis Diderot.
the online sources are conflicted. who are you to assert with such authority? (that is, is there something you read in a particular book, etc., which gives it meslier without a doubt?)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050718/letter
seems to point it to both, with Diderot supposedly borrowing it from Meslier, but it's also an online source :)