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Jan 3, 2008

Interesting psak from Imam Dr. Attiya: male breastfeeding and Mohammed's urine

I write frequently about interesting halachik decisions I hear about. Sometimes they are purely interesting, sometimes unique, sometimes controversial, sometimes silly.

Yesterday I read in the newspaper an article that described a vote of the most unusual declarations of the year. It included what I will call an Interesting psak from an imam.

BTW, the article only gave a couple of examples of decisions that were included int he list.

Anyway, some Imam came out with a psak in May of 2007 that ended up being controversial in the muslim world.

The issue at hand is a male and a female co-worker. They have an uncomfortable situation that their religion forbids them to be alone together, and she would not be allowed to remove her hijab, which win his presence, which would make her workday very uncomfortable.

The only way around this is to find some way to make them be considered family. This would be simple if they were both single - they could get married and solve the problem. The problem is that most of the time that is not a viable solution.

So this Imam found a way. He declared a fatwa that in such a situation the woman should nurse the man (yes, you read that correctly). If the male would breastfeed form the woman, they would be considered family and then they could be alone, she could remove her hijab in his presence, etc.

An unfortunate result of this though is that their children would not be allowed to marry each other because they too would be considered family with each other.

I have no idea if this solution only works if the woman in question is lactating, or if it is purely symbolic and even if she is not lactating, just the symbolic act of breastfeeding" would create the relationship. From the various articles I read on the subject (I did a little research which is why I did not post on this topic yesterday), none of them explained this detail.

Anyways, for your information, the Imam was fired from his position at his university after this psak became public.

Another interesting psak was that if one were to drink the urine of Mohamed, he would be blessed.

I was not aware that the urine of Mohamed is still readily available for consumption. Do they store it somewhere? do they sell it in bottles at the Mosque or at the local kiosk?
Has it been saved in storage similar to the Jewish tradition of a flask of manna and anointing oil having been stored and hidden away? I could not find much on this fatwa, but it is pretty disgusting.

Then again, I know there are various hassidic rebbes who also give away or sell "blessed wine" that would effect blessing on the people who drink from it. This is generally a small bottle of wine that was procured from the cup of the rebbe after he blessed on it and drank from it. Often, this bottle is then mixed with other bottles of wine, so as to spread the affect.

I remember as kids, my mother would sometimes get bottles of such wine from some rebbes who would come to town on visits. We generally refused to drink from it, considering it disgusting to drink from what other people already drank (I think we would say "spit in") from (what can I say - we were good yekkes and did not believe in these things). In my older years, I am much less concerned about germs and cooties and am less reluctant to drink such things..

Maybe they stored a bottle of urine from Mohamed and then mix it with other people's urine to increase the amounts and pass it around for people to drink and be blessed.

16 comments:

  1. http://mominisrael.blogspot.com/2007/05/interesting-take-on-religion-and.html

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  2. So this imam thought that it would be more comfortable to have this man breastfeed from her than to have to work in hijab?

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  3. yeah, it is pretty weird. also, it is like saying the solution to a yichud situation is for them to have some level of sexual relations and then it is no longer yichud... weird..

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  4. moi - I do not remember that post, but at least I am not delirious... I see I did not comment on it back then..

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  5. Give me a few days...and perhaps you'll suddenly see "Mohamed's urine" on sale on ebay.

    :-)

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  6. Jameel - I am looking forward to it

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  7. If we could sell a combination of "Mohammed's urine" with "Beit Shemesh soil" (Islamo-Judaic mud treatment?), we'd make a fortune!

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  8. lol.. a combination? mix the soil with urine? you can get that at the construction site across from my apartment ona daily basis. Mohamed's urinating on Bet Shemesh soil. Now I just need to get someone to scoop it up and bag it so we can sell it!

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  9. you forgot to mention that this psak was originally concocted up by Mohamed himself claiming to be based on the Quran. He needed it to allow him to get around some problems he created when he annuled adoption so that he could marry his adopted son's wife and his other wives decided to use it so that they could hang out wiht outher men as well. One Big Happy Family!

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  10. BTW - where the hell do you find this junk!?

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  11. 1. l'chaim!!!

    2. I will refrain from commenting on the co-ed psak, simply b/c there's too much in my head right now fighting to get out.

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  12. aye yai yai. Breastfeedng- I can see all sorts of good lines to use here. I'd have to milk that one for all its worth.

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  13. sounds like a left-wing liberal imam. "where there's an imamical will, there's a fatwa way..."

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  14. oy rafi, you make me laugh.
    what is a hijab, a shirt or a veil? lol.

    why was he fired. don't the muslims have a similar yeshiva to chovivei torah?

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  15. I've never considered converting to Islam until I read this article...

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  16. This is the great Islamic religion. One can't help compare this 'heter' (le-havdil)with our Jewish constructs such as building an eruv and selling our chametz.
    (You can certainly tell that Islam is, uh, divine, right?)

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