Breastfeed to bypass sex-mixing ban -scholar

Sheikh Abdul Mohsin al-Abaican, a consultant at the Saudi royal court, issued a fatwa stating there should be symbolic bond between unrelated men and women who regularly come into contact with each other, the newspaper said.

Abaican said the act would make a man and woman relatives and therefore their coming into contact would not breach the kingdom’s strict Islamic laws, Gulf News said, citing local Arabic newspaper reports.

Much of Saudi Arabia is governed by the conservative Wahhabi version of Islam, under which women are not allowed to go out without male guardians, unrelated men and women cannot mix, and women are not permitted to drive.

“The man should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman,” Abaican was quoted as saying.

“He should drink it and then becomes a relative of the family, a fact that allows him to come in contact with the women without breaking Islam’s rules about mixing.”

Abaican said the fatwa applied to men who lived in the same house or come into contact with women on a regular basis, except for drivers, according to the newspaper.

“The fatwa is only for those who live in the house or need to get in often,” he was quoted as saying.

Bloggers have slammed the fatwa, labelling it “totally unrelated to reality” and calling on scholars to focus on “much more significant issues”, Gulf News said.

Three years ago an Egyptian scholar who attended Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning, called for women to literally breastfeed men as a way of getting around the ban on mixing of the sexes,  according to the newspaper