Saudi women threaten to breastfeed drivers
Jun 20, 2010
Saudi women walk out of a shopping mall as they wait for their driver to pick them up in Riyadh on June 14, 2005. Women in the conservative kingdom are not allowed to drive. Photograph: AFP
DUBAI - Saudi women seem ready to adopt a controversial fatwa as they step up their campaign to achieve the right to drive in the conservative kingdom, UAE daily Gulf News reported on Sunday.
The fatwa, or religious ruling, allows women to breastfeed their drivers and turn them into their sons.
"We either be allowed to drive or breastfeed foreigners" will be the slogan of the campaign the women plan to launch, journalist Amal Zahid was quoted as saying in the newspaper.
Zahid said their decision follows a recent fatwa issued by a renowned scholar which said that Saudi women can breastfeed their foreign drivers for them to become their sons.
"As every Saudi family needs a driver, our campaign will focus on women's right to drive," she said.
A Saudi scholar last month suggested women donate their breast milk to men in an attempt to get around the kingdoms ban on the mixing of unrelated men and women, and his words have sparked controversy.
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.
Breast milk kinship is considered to be as good as a blood relationship in Islam, Gulf News said.
Saudi woman Fatima al-Shammary, told a local Arabic daily, that the fatwa was "ridiculous and weird".
She added: "This fatwa has become a hot topic of debate among women. Is this is all that is left to us to do: to give our breasts to the foreign drivers?"
Another Saudi woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Gulf News: Does Islam allow me to breastfeed a foreign man and prevent me from driving my own car? I have not breastfed my own children. How do you expect me to do this with a foreign man? What is this nonsense?"
