Egyptian lecturer may be suspended after breastfeeding fatwa

CAIRO, May 22 (Reuters) An Egyptian lecturer who suggested that men and women work colleagues could be alone together after ritual symbolic breastfeeding was threatened with disciplinary action by Cairo's al-Azhar Islamic institute.

Ezzat Atiya had drawn on Islamic traditions which forbid sexual relations between a man and a woman who has breastfed him to suggest that symbolic breastfeeding could be a way around strict segregation of males and females.

The Supreme Council of al-Azhar said Atiya, the head of the department which deals with sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, should be suspended and referred to a committee for questioning.

Atiya's unusual opinion, widely publicised by Arabic-language satellite television channels, has aroused controversy in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.

The Dubai-based channel Al Arabia quoted him as saying that after five breastfeedings the man and woman could be alone together without violating Islamic law and the woman could remove her headscarf to reveal her hair.

But the committee from Azhar, one of the main institutions of religious learning in the Arab world, said his proposal contradicted the principles of Islam and of morality.

Atiya had said he had drawn on medieval scholarship to justify his position.

However the opposition party newspaper al-Ahrar yesterday quoted him as saying he retracted his views because they were based on the opinions of a minority of scholars.

REUTERS AM PM0437