In a surprising development, two senior Saudi clerics today said that Saudi Arabia’s women should give their breast milk to male colleagues and acquaintances in order to safeguard the Islamic law that forbids mixing between the sexes. The clerics, however, failed to reach an agreement among each other on how the milk should be conveyed.
Recently a fatwa had been issued in the country about adult breast-feeding to establish “maternal relations” and preclude the possibility of sexual contact. The fatwa has already generated enough debates and it is likely that the debate over such explicit topics may force the Saudi government to introduce stricter regulations about how and when fatwas should be issued.
Sheikh Al Obeikan, an adviser to the royal court and consultant to the Ministry of Justice, had recently said that women who come into regular contact with men, who are not their relatives, should give them their breast milk in order to make them their relatives.
“The man should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman. 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,” Al Obeikan said, according to Gulf News. “
Obeikan’s remarks were followed by an announcement by another powerful Saudi cleric Abi Ishaq Al Huwaini, who asked women to allow the men to suckle the milk directly from their breast.