Hypocrites

There is an interesting headline moving through Muslim community listservs: "Did an Islamic cleric really ban women from touching bananas and cucumbers?"

This past week, an email pinged around the world, claiming that a Muslim cleric "residing in Europe" issued a, well, interesting fatwa, or religious ruling, banning Muslim women from touching bananas or cucumbers: “He said that these fruits and vegetables ‘resemble the male penis’ and hence could arouse women or ‘make them think of sex,'" according to a report in a supposed Egyptian website, BikyaMasr. The Times of India ran the story: "Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas."

"If women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve," the cleric supposedly dictated.

It's hard to confirm that the fatwa is true, but the fact that we, in the Muslim community, would even think it's possible is a reflection of just how inane the phenomenon of fatwas has become in the Muslim community. The idea of the fatwa became notorious when an Iranian cleric called for the killing of author Salman Rushdie when he published the novel The Satanic Verses, about an erased portion in the Koran supposedly inspired by the Devil.

The fatwas used to carry the authority of divine ordination. But the years since have revealed that, indeed, there is nothing to fear—or revere—about the fatwa. In fact, nowadays, you can get a fatwa to validate any point you want to make. I call it "fatwa shopping."