Saudi Authorities Pull Plug On Radio Show Of Breast Milk Fatwa Cleric

I'm not sure which country should be awarded the top prize for the Clerics with the most bizarre fatwas. Egypt has had its fair share of doozies, as has Malaysia and Indonesia. Somalia's extremist group Al-Shabaab has come out with some incredibly asinine ones, but they're not really clerics and don't represent Somalia. And then, of course, there's Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah, however, is trying to reign in the wacky clerics in his country, and has done so by taking one of the more bizarre ones off the air.

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Remember Sheikh Abdel Mohsen Obeikan? He's the one who actually told adult males that they should drink the breast milk of unrelated coworkers so that there would be no problems with the draconian 'anti-mingling' laws that Saudi Arabia still has on their books. Although he's not the only one who has come up with that brilliantly stupid idea. Yes, indeed, there are actually those (including Obeikan) who believe that this is a totally acceptable way of getting around the anti-mingling laws. Apparently, there's some law in Islam that states that if a woman breastfeeds a male child, somehow they become maternally linked and then it's okay for them to be in the same room together, because they are now kind of 'related' through the milk. But nowhere in the religious teachings does it state that's it's okay for adult men to do the same thing. The idea is just perverse.

Anyway, Obeikan now has no forum for his fatwa fetish since he no longer has his radio show. Interesting, considering he is also supposedly a court advisor.

Saudi authorities on Wednesday reportedly pulled the plug on Obeikan's radio program "Fatwas on Air," a daily morning show in which Obeikan would go on air and issue fatwas -- religious rulings -- to the public on various matters.

In a bid to stop unauthorized clerics issuing odd religious decrees, the king has reportedly put out a royal decree authorizing only members of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars to issue fatwas from now on...

Of course there is the usual debate between those who applaud the decision and those who believe it goes against free speech. The major difference is that people in countries where religious laws take precedence over civil law, people might look at these fatwas as something that one needs to follow, when they are not necessarily sanctioned by the government. And I'm sure some of the more bizarre ones are not something King Abdullah wants to be associated with.

Sheikh Yousuf Ahmad, a lecturer at the Imam Mohammad bin Saud University in Riyadh, earlier this summer suggested that only Muslim maids should be allowed to work in Saudi homes. The cleric has also called for the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam's holiest site and the world's largest mosque, to be demolished and rebuilt in a way that would ensure segregation between the sexes in the shrine.

Good for King Abdullah for attempting to make sure Saudi Arabia doesn't continue to be the laughing stock of the Muslim world with all those "silly" fatwas.