In 2007 there were two grotesque and embarrassing controversies ignited by opinions delivered by qualified religious scholars from one of the world’s greatest and most authoritative institutions of Islamic learning, that hit the headlines and raged through the Arab and Islamic media, spilling out into the global media, thus further undermining the image of Islam in the West and the authority of Islamic institutions in the Muslim world. If one wanted to dream up ways to discredit Islamic authority, one couldn’t come up with two more damaging news items. The first, and most outrageous, of the two controversies revolved around an opinion given by Dr. Izzat Atiyya, the head of the Hadith Department in Al-Azhar University’s Usool El-Din Faculty. During an interview in Al Gomhoriya newspaper, Dr. Atiyya, gave an opinion that a woman who is required to work in private with a man not of her immediate family – a situation that is widespread across the Islamic world and technically forbidden by Islamic law – can resolve the problem by breastfeeding the adult man, which, according to his interpretation of shari'ah, turns him into a member of her immediate family. He supported this opinion by citing an obscure hadith referring to a unique situation that in the history of Islam had never been invoked as the basis of a legal ruling.
He said:
"Being together in private means being in a room with the door closed, so that nobody can see them... A man and a woman who are not family members are not permitted [to do this], because it raises suspicions and doubts. A man and a woman who are alone together are not [necessarily] having sex, but this possibility exists, and breastfeeding provides a solution to this problem... I also insist that the breastfeeding relationship be officially documented in writing... The contract will state that this woman has suckled this man... After this, the woman may remove her hijab and expose her hair in the man's [presence]...”
Of course, he failed to address the fact that a woman exposing her breasts to an unrelated adult male in the first place, would be a far greater violation of shari’ah than exposing her hair!
Needless to say, the Egyptian press had a field day with this and, Egypt being Egypt, the story launched an avalanche of salacious jokes around the country. Then of course there was the inevitable absurd but completely serious follow up debate among some commentators and religious scholars on the use of the breast pump, which led to another barrage of jokes and ridicule. The jokes were ultimately translated into a series of cartoons that circulated through email and on the Internet. I am going to show this series but please be warned that the images you are about to see are obscene. I’ve blacked out the pornographic parts but if you would rather not look please lower your eyes.
An ill-advised religious opinion – and I’m being polite here – delivered via the mass media can create an ugly blowback that elicits the haram rather than the halal, no matter how pious the original intention. It also demonstrates the powerful interactive aspect of public discussion in our time. The mass media and the new media have become a fact of life and a major force and scholars and religious institutions that choose to ignore this reality do so at their own peril.
The media demonstrated gross irresponsibility in giving this bizarre opinion so many column inches. And Dr. Attiya demonstrated gross irresponsibility by issuing the opinion in the first place and then staunchly defending him-self in a national newspaper, ending his defense by saying, and I quote: "The fact that the hadith regarding the breastfeeding of an adult is inconceivable to the mind does not make it invalid. This is a reliable hadith, and rejecting it is tantamount to rejecting Allah's Messenger and questioning the Prophet's tradition." Now let’s please recall what Al Ghazali said about the purpose and meaning of fiqh.
Personally, I find Atiya’s defense infinitely more offensive than the original opinion. It is this kind of religious totalitarianism that is completely contrary to the spirit of Islam and is undermining the trust intelligent people have in these institutions, and is an indication of just how hidebound and blind Islamic scholarship has become. Apart from anything else, he’s missing the point. Whether the hadith is true or not is completely irrelevant because the action is absolutely inapplicable, not to say abominable, in this age. Moreover, this demonstrates how disconnected this particular scholar is from the realities of global media. And he’s not just some nut standing on a street corner. He was the head of hadith studies at a major Islamic university.
Whereas, in ancient traditional societies an eccentric opinion from a relatively obscure muhadith would most certainly have been confined to a small circle of students and then superseded by saner voices, in the world we inhabit, and particularly given the precarious situation the Islamic world is in at the moment, delivering this opinion in the mass media is idiotic and then defending it is obscene. I think we can legitimately ask how it is that Al Azhar University, one of the most venerable and respected religious institutions in the Islamic world, would allow someone so patently out of touch with the realities of this world to teach Islam to young people. Talk about Ivory Towers!
Dr. Atiyya was removed from his post over the incident and he made a belated public apology but the damage has already been done.
While the breastfeeding fiasco demonstrates the profound and dangerous weakness of Islamic scholarship in our time, the second controversy I will address demonstrates the ignorance, incompetence and irresponsibility of much of the Arab and Islamic media. This is the now notorious “urine fatwa” supposedly issued by the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ali Gomaa.
Before his appointment as Grand Mufti, Dr. Gomaa was the highly popular khatib in the historic Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo and gave well-attended discourses after every Juma’a prayer. During one of these discourses he was asked about the veracity of an obscure hadith about a woman companion who carried the chamber pot of the Prophet Mohamed, peace and blessings be upon him, and once drank its contents for the blessing. He affirmed that the hadith was true, commenting that, according to shari’ah, Allah created all the Prophets absolutely pure to the extent that everything coming from them was pure and that this act was a sign of this woman companion’s extreme love of the Prophet Mohamed. He did not issue a fatwa because a fatwa is a call to action in the world we live in and, the Prophet Mohamed, no longer being in this world, had no urine for anyone else to drink. Moreover, in the greater context of scholarship, there is no other single report of any other companion ever doing this or the practice ever being recommended. Unfortunately, Dr Gomaa allowed this and other discourses to be recorded, transcribed and compiled into books which were subsequently published. And, years later a self-described “Islamic writer”, which means someone who has no qualification to write about Islam, dredged up this obscure exchange and used it to attack the Grand Mufti as part of a smear campaign, to undermine the reforms Dr. Gomaa has been calling for. A reporter from the Egyptian daily Al Masri Al Yaum picked up the complaint and, without contacting Dar Al Iftah or verifying his facts, published a story describing Dr. Gomaa’s comments on the hadith as a “Fatwa” on the spiritual benefits of drinking the Prophet’s urine.
Once again, the press jumped all over this “Urine Fatwa” story without bothering to refer to the Mufti or check the facts, the Egyptian joke-masters worked overtime, the bloggers went to town, and urine hit the headlines along with breastfeeding. Dr. Gomaa issued a statement calling on the press to desist from the discussion as totally useless and irrelevant and that he was withdrawing the book because it was diverting people from more important issues. The press completely ignored him and kept on the story until it too reached the global media, resulting in the International Herald Tribune headline: ‘A FATWA FREE-FOR-ALL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD’.
While this was all happening the Majmou’a Bohooth Al Islami, the highest united Islamic authority in Egypt, issued a ground-breaking religious decision – that, according to Shari’ah women could serve as judges in courts of law (up to now women have been prohibited from serving as judges in Egypt and many other Muslim countries). This decision echoed and upheld a fatwa previously delivered by the Grand Mufti. Was this landmark decision covered? Yes, once, in one newspaper. The breastfeeding and urine controversies were given massive and repeated coverage for weeks on end in every single mass circulation publication in Egypt and many abroad. This is yellow journalism – no pun intended – at its most degraded.
While all this has been happening we have witnessed a descent into collective madness, with atrocities, decapitations, car-bombings, suicide-bombings, hostage-taking and mass murder of innocents in the name of Islam taking place repeatedly across the world stage, in Muslim countries and in non-Islamic countries. Has there been a resounding repudiation of extremism and its many horrors from a unified community of Islamic scholars? The answer is no. While many Muslim scholars have indeed condemned acts of terrorism, many more are silent or equivocal. There is no unity. The voice of sanity coming from the Islamic world is weak. Demagogues dominate. Piety is confused with being rightly guided. I have no doubt that Osama Binladin is more pious than many of us in this room but he and his comrades are leading millions of Muslims to hell.
I’ll give you one last example of the current situation. Last year, during the now infamous Danish cartoon controversy, the Grand Mufti of Egypt delivered a landmark fatwa, published on the pages of Al Ahram newspaper calling on Muslims to desist from protest and reaction, citing, among others, the Quranic verse:
So overlook with gracious forgiveness…. For We are sufficient unto you against the mockers. [Even] against those who adopt with God another god; but soon will they come to know. We do indeed know how your heart is distressed at what they say. But glorify your Lord with His praise, and be of those who prostrate. And worship your Lord until what is certain comes to you [the Judgment, or death] (15:85-99).
Did the fatwa have any impact? Not a bit. It was entirely overlooked by the media and the general public. Why? It was overlooked by the public because the opinion was delivered after 8 long, expository paragraphs in a newspaper. In journalistic terms, the Grand Mufti “buried the lead”. It was overlooked by the press because there is not a single journalist around qualified to cover Islam or recognize a truly important Islamic news development. People lost their lives over this stupid and embarrassing protest. Images of Muslim demonstrators calling for “Death to the Infidels” on the streets of London were broadcast around the world once again reinforcing the impression that Muslims were fanatical barbarians. And all these hysterical reactions were in violation of the Qur’an.
He said:
"Being together in private means being in a room with the door closed, so that nobody can see them... A man and a woman who are not family members are not permitted [to do this], because it raises suspicions and doubts. A man and a woman who are alone together are not [necessarily] having sex, but this possibility exists, and breastfeeding provides a solution to this problem... I also insist that the breastfeeding relationship be officially documented in writing... The contract will state that this woman has suckled this man... After this, the woman may remove her hijab and expose her hair in the man's [presence]...”
Of course, he failed to address the fact that a woman exposing her breasts to an unrelated adult male in the first place, would be a far greater violation of shari’ah than exposing her hair!
Needless to say, the Egyptian press had a field day with this and, Egypt being Egypt, the story launched an avalanche of salacious jokes around the country. Then of course there was the inevitable absurd but completely serious follow up debate among some commentators and religious scholars on the use of the breast pump, which led to another barrage of jokes and ridicule. The jokes were ultimately translated into a series of cartoons that circulated through email and on the Internet. I am going to show this series but please be warned that the images you are about to see are obscene. I’ve blacked out the pornographic parts but if you would rather not look please lower your eyes.
An ill-advised religious opinion – and I’m being polite here – delivered via the mass media can create an ugly blowback that elicits the haram rather than the halal, no matter how pious the original intention. It also demonstrates the powerful interactive aspect of public discussion in our time. The mass media and the new media have become a fact of life and a major force and scholars and religious institutions that choose to ignore this reality do so at their own peril.
The media demonstrated gross irresponsibility in giving this bizarre opinion so many column inches. And Dr. Attiya demonstrated gross irresponsibility by issuing the opinion in the first place and then staunchly defending him-self in a national newspaper, ending his defense by saying, and I quote: "The fact that the hadith regarding the breastfeeding of an adult is inconceivable to the mind does not make it invalid. This is a reliable hadith, and rejecting it is tantamount to rejecting Allah's Messenger and questioning the Prophet's tradition." Now let’s please recall what Al Ghazali said about the purpose and meaning of fiqh.
Personally, I find Atiya’s defense infinitely more offensive than the original opinion. It is this kind of religious totalitarianism that is completely contrary to the spirit of Islam and is undermining the trust intelligent people have in these institutions, and is an indication of just how hidebound and blind Islamic scholarship has become. Apart from anything else, he’s missing the point. Whether the hadith is true or not is completely irrelevant because the action is absolutely inapplicable, not to say abominable, in this age. Moreover, this demonstrates how disconnected this particular scholar is from the realities of global media. And he’s not just some nut standing on a street corner. He was the head of hadith studies at a major Islamic university.
Whereas, in ancient traditional societies an eccentric opinion from a relatively obscure muhadith would most certainly have been confined to a small circle of students and then superseded by saner voices, in the world we inhabit, and particularly given the precarious situation the Islamic world is in at the moment, delivering this opinion in the mass media is idiotic and then defending it is obscene. I think we can legitimately ask how it is that Al Azhar University, one of the most venerable and respected religious institutions in the Islamic world, would allow someone so patently out of touch with the realities of this world to teach Islam to young people. Talk about Ivory Towers!
Dr. Atiyya was removed from his post over the incident and he made a belated public apology but the damage has already been done.
While the breastfeeding fiasco demonstrates the profound and dangerous weakness of Islamic scholarship in our time, the second controversy I will address demonstrates the ignorance, incompetence and irresponsibility of much of the Arab and Islamic media. This is the now notorious “urine fatwa” supposedly issued by the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ali Gomaa.
Before his appointment as Grand Mufti, Dr. Gomaa was the highly popular khatib in the historic Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo and gave well-attended discourses after every Juma’a prayer. During one of these discourses he was asked about the veracity of an obscure hadith about a woman companion who carried the chamber pot of the Prophet Mohamed, peace and blessings be upon him, and once drank its contents for the blessing. He affirmed that the hadith was true, commenting that, according to shari’ah, Allah created all the Prophets absolutely pure to the extent that everything coming from them was pure and that this act was a sign of this woman companion’s extreme love of the Prophet Mohamed. He did not issue a fatwa because a fatwa is a call to action in the world we live in and, the Prophet Mohamed, no longer being in this world, had no urine for anyone else to drink. Moreover, in the greater context of scholarship, there is no other single report of any other companion ever doing this or the practice ever being recommended. Unfortunately, Dr Gomaa allowed this and other discourses to be recorded, transcribed and compiled into books which were subsequently published. And, years later a self-described “Islamic writer”, which means someone who has no qualification to write about Islam, dredged up this obscure exchange and used it to attack the Grand Mufti as part of a smear campaign, to undermine the reforms Dr. Gomaa has been calling for. A reporter from the Egyptian daily Al Masri Al Yaum picked up the complaint and, without contacting Dar Al Iftah or verifying his facts, published a story describing Dr. Gomaa’s comments on the hadith as a “Fatwa” on the spiritual benefits of drinking the Prophet’s urine.
Once again, the press jumped all over this “Urine Fatwa” story without bothering to refer to the Mufti or check the facts, the Egyptian joke-masters worked overtime, the bloggers went to town, and urine hit the headlines along with breastfeeding. Dr. Gomaa issued a statement calling on the press to desist from the discussion as totally useless and irrelevant and that he was withdrawing the book because it was diverting people from more important issues. The press completely ignored him and kept on the story until it too reached the global media, resulting in the International Herald Tribune headline: ‘A FATWA FREE-FOR-ALL IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD’.
While this was all happening the Majmou’a Bohooth Al Islami, the highest united Islamic authority in Egypt, issued a ground-breaking religious decision – that, according to Shari’ah women could serve as judges in courts of law (up to now women have been prohibited from serving as judges in Egypt and many other Muslim countries). This decision echoed and upheld a fatwa previously delivered by the Grand Mufti. Was this landmark decision covered? Yes, once, in one newspaper. The breastfeeding and urine controversies were given massive and repeated coverage for weeks on end in every single mass circulation publication in Egypt and many abroad. This is yellow journalism – no pun intended – at its most degraded.
While all this has been happening we have witnessed a descent into collective madness, with atrocities, decapitations, car-bombings, suicide-bombings, hostage-taking and mass murder of innocents in the name of Islam taking place repeatedly across the world stage, in Muslim countries and in non-Islamic countries. Has there been a resounding repudiation of extremism and its many horrors from a unified community of Islamic scholars? The answer is no. While many Muslim scholars have indeed condemned acts of terrorism, many more are silent or equivocal. There is no unity. The voice of sanity coming from the Islamic world is weak. Demagogues dominate. Piety is confused with being rightly guided. I have no doubt that Osama Binladin is more pious than many of us in this room but he and his comrades are leading millions of Muslims to hell.
I’ll give you one last example of the current situation. Last year, during the now infamous Danish cartoon controversy, the Grand Mufti of Egypt delivered a landmark fatwa, published on the pages of Al Ahram newspaper calling on Muslims to desist from protest and reaction, citing, among others, the Quranic verse:
So overlook with gracious forgiveness…. For We are sufficient unto you against the mockers. [Even] against those who adopt with God another god; but soon will they come to know. We do indeed know how your heart is distressed at what they say. But glorify your Lord with His praise, and be of those who prostrate. And worship your Lord until what is certain comes to you [the Judgment, or death] (15:85-99).
Did the fatwa have any impact? Not a bit. It was entirely overlooked by the media and the general public. Why? It was overlooked by the public because the opinion was delivered after 8 long, expository paragraphs in a newspaper. In journalistic terms, the Grand Mufti “buried the lead”. It was overlooked by the press because there is not a single journalist around qualified to cover Islam or recognize a truly important Islamic news development. People lost their lives over this stupid and embarrassing protest. Images of Muslim demonstrators calling for “Death to the Infidels” on the streets of London were broadcast around the world once again reinforcing the impression that Muslims were fanatical barbarians. And all these hysterical reactions were in violation of the Qur’an.
2 comments:
You wrote a great article - however, I and millions like me do not believe that Islamic inhumanity to everything it touches is "not in the Quran". We are now too wise to believe that - even from you who seems like perhaps you should not be Islamic.
It's all in the Quran - every bit of the horror and more. And yes, I know how to read it, etc.
Sorry but - perhaps you need to take up a better cause than Islam.
You and millions of others are certainly entitled to believe what you like. Your opinions have, however, caused you to miss the point of the piece. It was, in any case, based upon a speech delivered to Muslims in Malaysia. I do not consider myself 'Islamic' nor have I taken Islam as a 'cause'. But thanks for the compliment, however left-handed it is meant to be.
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