Dirty Old Men

This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine

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How could I not write about this? Would I let this one pass and be able to live with myself? You know me too well by now. This is too classic to let go of.

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You see, Arabs and Muslims have solved all their intractable problems. They live in peace with each other and in harmony with the rest of the world. Poverty and illiteracy are things of the past. Unprecedented economic prosperity is coupled with an individual drive for scientific innovation that dwarves all the inventions of Thomas Edison and Leonardo Da Vinci combined.

Our universities are oozing with hordes of promising generations, our factories are exporting marvels to the world, our theatres are beaming with cultural talent, and our cities are virtual gardens of earthly delights. Foreigners are queuing at our embassies begging us to live in our midst. The new UNDP report is composed of only one paragraph that describes us as a perfect people.

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We’ve conquered life and grabbed our destiny by the balls, and we have become a model for all nations to emulate.

But there is one lingering problem that we are yet to overcome before we herald the inauguration of heaven on earth. Our men and women are mixing at the work place, and this blasphemy is abominable in the eyes of God; it may actually threaten to destroy everything we have achieved so far. But Dr. Izzat Atiyeh, the Chief of the Hadeeth Department at the Azhar University, would not sleep at night before unearthing a way to deliver us from evil. From his influential post at the Vatican of the Muslim world, salvation would be rendered. Rejoice, for redemption is forthcoming.

Abilene Town dvd You may be familiar with this story already, but it deserves a retrospective look. This year, in order for a male and a female who are strangers to be able to work inside a closed office room, Dr. Atiyeh came up with an ingenious solution that would finally resolve this nagging crisis. This past May, he issued a fatwa decreeing that a male co-worker should breast-feed from his female co-worker in order to establish a familial link between the couple which would eliminate the forbidden state of having two complete strangers working in the same room (no, you’re not blind, what you read is correct: b r e a s t – f e e d).

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The learned professor and guardian of our shari’ah stated that it is preferable if such a bond be documented on paper, registering the occurrence of the breast-feeding exercise. He did not, however, explain whether the female needs to be lactating in order to produce actual milk, but indicated nevertheless that five oral feeds from the breast in a nursing manner would suffice. He stated that such a scheme is in fact a religious duty derived from the books of hadeeth (sayings of the Prophet), a veritable faculty of science over which he resides, and is the only safe practice in order to avoid the prohibition of having a woman and a man, God forbid, share an office together.

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As you would normally expect in an enlightened institution such as Al Azhar, this fatwa has generated intense debate. There are those who agree, and those who strongly disagree, of course (Dr. Atiyeh referred to such disagreement between men of knowledge as a “mercy” from God). The detractors fear the sexual ramifications of a male sucking the nipples of his co-worker, but perish the thought, Dr. Atiyeh vehemently disagreed. In a later interview, he maintained that although adults would not and should not normally breast-feed, this situation is an exceptional one, making breast-feeding imperative as the only way to avoid the greater evil of mixing both sexes. And his retraction was deemed insufficient by his university.

A few months ago I wrote in this magazine that “[t]he contradictions inside the average Arab mind between an outward proclamation of chastity and an actual obsession with carnal pleasures defy any logical analysis”. Many people did not like what I said, but for the life of me, I could not possibly imagine this scenario ever taking shape. This was beyond my wildest imagination and beneath all the pornographic material that I have come across ever since I learnt what a pair of breasts actually are.

This fatwa will go down in history as the final proof that many of our men of the cloth are in serious need of psychiatric help. I can hear many people saying, but wait, this guy is an exception, and the mainstream Azhar clerics disapprove of this fatwa. Well, that’s not enough, because the disagreement here is purely academic. This is where the catastrophe lies: in the tons of literature being force-fed down our throats as the true sayings of the Prophet, as authentic as the Quran itself. Other clerics disagree? Really? Atiyeh was suspended? But where was the real outrage? Where were the crazed demonstrations that followed the publications of those Danish cartoons? In God’s name, which is more devastating to our heritage and religion, a few caricatures that no one has taken notice of until we exploded in a disproportionate fit of rage, or Al Azhar’s bizarre instructions for oral sex in the workplace?

I can go on and on about this travesty, but the best reaction to such tragic state of affairs is to become absolutely speechless. Besides, I have to go take my coffee break, and this time, I don’t know why, I feel like having it without milk.