My husband and I frequently listen to NPR in the morning to get a quick run-down of the world news. He was about leave when we heard this statement:
An Egyptian cleric — not on TV, but from Cairo's venerable Al Azhar University itself — issued the much-ridiculed "breastfeeding fatwa," which proposed that a woman could work alongside an unrelated man if she had breast-fed him five times.
Whaaaat? There isn't any unrelated man that I'd do that for just so I could get a job. For-get-IT. And then, I remembered having heard once that in the Arab culture, if one breastfeeds someone else's baby even one time, culturally the woman may look on the child as if it were her own. So, likely, they meant that if the woman had breastfed the man as a baby, it is as if he is now related to her, and so they can work together. Surely, that is what they mean. This would be a good example for a writing class on how easily one can imply the wrong thing.
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5 comments:
HUH??? I don't get it. When my #2 was born, #1 who was 3 1/2 wanted to try to nurse. I tried not to laugh---to be a compassionate, understanding mom, but I cracked up. But breastfeeding an adult male to get a job. I. DON'T. THINK. SO!
Is this company accepting applications? Dad
And I always found being on interview panels dull...
That is quite cute.
Did you really misinterpret it though, or did you think it would make a good story? (Which it does...)
Honestly, for just a second I though "WHAT?" and then I realized how it was just badly worded. But most Americans do not know that Arabs have this custom.
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