by Ibrahim Essa
The present mufti had fallen ill and the state was looking for a successor. Fathi had been the frontrunner, based on the recommendation of the security services. Other officials were enthusiastic and they had old debts to repay, such as for fatwas that condemned terrorism, that called for obedience to the ruler, that banned dissent, allowed banks to pay or charge interest, and permitted commercial dealings with Israel and cooperation between Israeli and Egyptian businessmen. Fathi’s fatwas were always ready to serve. He came up with them quickly and enthusiastically and they were so well-argued that no one could possibly pull them apart. They might dispute them or challenge them with counter-fatwas but Fathi didn’t stray from the strict text of the Quranic verses, sticking to citations from the Quran and the Sunna, opposing anyone who appealed to the rules of analogy or of individual judgment. His strength was that he didn’t offer his own opinion or even the opinions of the imams and jurists active in the early years of Islam, but based his arguments directly on explicit verses of the Quran and the hadiths of Bukhari, who was so revered by the public and the authorities that his hadiths were seen as uncontestable.
But Hatem el-Shenawi had made fun of him when, in an unfortunate slip at the annual Ramadan gathering in Hussein Square, he mentioned the fatwa on adult breastfeeding. It passed off peacefully that night and those who heard it were merely surprised and intrigued that the fatwa existed. But two days later, in his television program, Hatem el-Shenawi picked it up, showed a video recording of the event, and discussed the subject. Hatem thoroughly ridiculed the fatwa and the next morning masses of people from far and wide—friends and enemies, allies and rivals—joined in, ripping into Sheikh Fathi. They had segments on the fatwa in show business programs, it came up in scenes in the theater, and there were endless cartoons on the subject and commentaries in all the newspapers, with everyone acting like they were the top sheikh, defending and squabbling over the reputation of Islam. The administrators of his department at the university created an archive of 460 references to adult breastfeeding and the fatwa in Egyptian newspapers alone. His candidacy for the office of mufti was bound to suffer.
The head of the State Security Investigations department, who had been his friend since they were junior officials and who had risen through the ranks in parallel with Fathi, had told him at the time, “Mawlana, do you think the state could appoint you mufti at this juncture, when the whole country is making fun of adult breastfeeding? If it did, people would say the government wants women to breastfeed men in government offices and in schools, and we’d never hear the end of it.”
He’d had to lower his expectations, especially after some mediocre sheikh was appointed to the office that Fathi saw as his legitimate right. This only added to his anger with Hatem el-Shenawi, whom he saw as the root of all his troubles, although Hatem had apologized to him in one of his programs and, in an attempt to placate him, had praised his learning and his legal expertise. But Fathi never forgave him, and when Hatem made another dig at him at Khaled Abu Hadid’s reception, Sheikh Fathi stood up and, with a smile and a calm that concealed more sinister intentions, said:
“Sheikh Hatem, what did I teach you at university when I was giving you lessons on the sayings of the Prophet?”
Sheikh Fathi had managed to put himself in the position of a professor addressing his student. His sortie seemed to go down well with the crowd, judging from their faces. But Hatem had a quick retort:
“You taught me to say grace before eating.”
He could see that Sheikh Fathi was shaken. Some of the people present tittered, which made him worried that Fathi might lose his cool and turn vitriolic. Hatem quickly made amends for his churlish quip with some more sober remarks:
“It’s true, I swear, some of the most enjoyable and most educative moments possible are when you hear Dr. Fathi el-Maadawi explaining an eleven-word saying of the Prophet in intricate detail and with his vast legal knowledge, such as the saying, ‘Speak God’s name and eat the part that’s closest to you,’ which we all know by heart. Could anything be easier? You have the words of the Prophet, clear and direct, instructions that need no explanation. Why are you laughing, Khaled Pasha? I said explanation, not excavation, as everyone was doing when they were digging out the pieces of meat just now. Sheikh Fathi takes the hadith and deconstructs it, like an electrician when he takes the television or the radio apart in front of you, and then puts it back together again piece by piece after explaining how each piece works. That’s what Mawlana Fathi el-Maadawi used to do.”
Did that placate Fathi? Hatem thought that on the contrary it might have provoked him even more. Fathi brushed aside Hatem’s attempt to appease him with flattery and hit back with a rebuke of his own.
“Apparently I taught you how to eat but forgot to teach you how to think!” he said.
This inflamed the atmosphere once again. Hatem decided it was war and there would be no retreat and no surrender.
“What do you think of Bukhari’s book?” Fathi continued.
“The truest book after the Quran,” someone said.
Fathi looked daggers at Hatem with his eyes, then turned his head toward those seated.
“But apparently Sheikh Hatem rejects many of Bukhari’s hadiths,” he said.
Hatem shuddered for a moment, for fear that Fathi might have access to something he had said in some private meeting. But he got his breath back when Fathi continued:
“I know Sheikh Hatem understood properly what I taught him in the course. I know he believes that when Bukhari cites a hadith it means he has checked it and has made sure that the chain of transmission is through people whose credibility is unblemished. Isn’t that right, Sheikh Hatem? So what do you think of the adult breastfeeding fatwa, which is soundly sourced and in Bukhari’s collection? I didn’t make it up and I didn’t even offer any particular interpretation of it. I just quoted it word for word. The ulema have taught us that Muslims must accept God’s rulings obediently. When a matter has been decided by God and His messenger, no believer, man or woman, has any choice in the matter: anyone who disobeys God and His messenger is on a clearly wrong path. That’s what Islam means, Sheikh Hatem. Muslims don’t debate God’s injunctions. They debate the evidence. Could the hadith be false even if it appears in both Bukhari and Muslim, simply because it’s not to the liking of Sheikh Hatem?”
Sheikh Fathi then put on his prophetic voice. “It’s correct and there’s no doubt about it,” he thundered.
“Are you sure it’s reached the stage of ‘no doubt about it,’ Sheikh Fathi?” said Hatem.
Fathi ignored him and continued.
“I understand that Sheikh Hatem is fully aware that the hadith is sound, or else I and others would consider him to be contesting Bukhari and Muslim and other major scholars. But he has been carried away by the secularists who deny Islam and are full of hatred for it. He plays the role of the rational thinker who challenges sheikhs like myself who maintain the traditions. So he’s the big brain and we’re the ignoramuses who stick to the accepted books on the sayings and practice of the Prophet and who hold Bukhari in respect. I understand, folks, that people who are not specialists speak ill of people with turbans like us, but Sheikh Hatem’s turban is too big for him and he dares to reject solidly attested hadiths lightly and to insult prominent imams with the same daring, might I even say impudence. You wouldn’t expect this from someone who, as eminent scholars put it, has had a taste of learning and lived among learned men, either alive through their lectures or dead through their books.
“This hadith was not mentioned in just one book, or two or three,” Fathi roared defiantly. “It wasn’t recounted by just one or two Companions of the Prophet, or just one or two people from the generation that came after them. To quote Ibn Hazm, it was transmitted by everyone to everyone, through those of the second generation and then the third generation and then to the great imams who codified Islamic law after them.”
Khaled and some of the generals laughed together at
the sight of Sheikh Fathi getting worked up. Everyone ignored their cell phones when they rang. The audience was silent, although not because they were interested in scholarship—it was the kind of silence that occurs in the cinema during a sex scene.
“Why don’t you tell us the hadith first, Sheikh Fathi?” said Khaled.
Fathi repeated the story in a clipped robotic way, like someone in a hurry who has memorized the text and assumes the others know it too, so there’s no need to articulate it clearly.
They all laughed.
“We couldn’t hear anything and we didn’t understand a word,” said one of the generals. He had proudly been fingering his prayer beads with an audible clicking throughout the session.
In an attempt to show that he wasn’t upset and to needle Sheikh Fathi, Hatem decided to recite the hadith to them himself.
“Aisha, may God be pleased with her, related that Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa, lived with Abu Hudhayfa and his family in their house. Sahla bint Suheil, Abu Hudhayfa’s wife, came to the Prophet and said that Abu Hudhayfa was unhappy about Salim having free access to the house, whereupon the Prophet said to her: ‘Suckle him and you would become unlawful for him, and Abu Hudhayfa’s feeling will disappear.’ She came back later and said: ‘So I suckled him, and the feeling that Abu Hudhayfa had disappeared.’
“In another version Abu Hudhayfa had adopted Salim in every sense as far as his relationship with the rest of the household was concerned, according to Sahla, who said, ‘O Prophet of God, we saw Salim as our child. He would come into the room when I was in my house clothes and we only had one room, so what do you think about the situation?’ And the Prophet of God said to her, ‘Breastfeed him five times and the milk will make him unlawful to you,’ and she considered him to be her son through breastfeeding. She said, ‘I breastfed him and the feeling that Abu Hudhayfa had disappeared.’”
“See, there you are, just as he said!” shouted Fathi with a wave of his hand. “And what’s more, Aisha told her sisters and her sisters’ daughters to breastfeed the men she wanted to visit her five times, even if they were old, and then they could come and see her. Umm Salama and the other wives of the Prophet refused to let any men be breastfed in this way.”
“Go on then, deny it if you will, mister sheikh,” he added, his hands outstretched as if to say ‘over to you.’
“Forgive me, you’re the expert, but anyway I don’t deny the hadith, Mawlana. Don’t misrepresent me,” Hatem replied.
“My god,” shouted Fathi. “You don’t deny it when we’re sitting here together, but on television in front of millions of people you treated me as though I’d found the hadith in my father’s attic!”
“I know your father’s house was a house of learning,” said Hatem.
“You think this is funny! I swear by the life of your father . . .” replied Fathi, fuming with rage again.
“What’s the big deal, folks?” chipped in Sheikh Sorour in his deep voice. “What’s with this hadith on adult breastfeeding? Sounds like a good idea to me. At my age it’s not often you get to suck a breast.”
There was an uproar of laughter and outrage.
“See, Sheikh Fathi, this is exactly what I wanted to warn against,” said Hatem. “This is a hadith for scholars and we shouldn’t be broadcasting it to ordinary people. Now you see what happens. I didn’t deny it, but I did explain the special circumstances in which it arose.”
“What do you mean, special circumstances?” said Fathi. “Is this a hadith that’s fully authenticated, endorsing the practice of adult breastfeeding, or isn’t it? Go on, answer me.”
“I haven’t finished what I’m going to say, so don’t rush me.”
“Okay, but this is a subject where you can’t be evasive.”
“No, you can,” said Hatem, “because evasion here means explaining the subject, Mawlana. Because the hadith covers only the case of Salim the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa, and it was a case that was particular to the time and the period.”
“If that was the case, why did Aisha treat it as a clear-cut ruling and have her nieces breastfeed men who wouldn’t otherwise be able to visit her, so that they could come and go freely in her house?” said Fathi.
“Well, that was Aisha’s opinion, but none of the Prophet’s other wives did that.”
“That’s not true. Hafsa did it.”
“Okay, but there was no consensus on it, and besides, for the breastfeeding sessions there had to be a child that was being weaned and the feedings needed to be large enough to fill the man’s stomach.”
One of the generals burst out excitedly, “That’s right, Mawlana. How could a great oaf like me breastfeed from a woman in this way? There wouldn’t be enough milk to feed me, or even to make my mustache grow.”
Despite the guffaws from the audience, Fathi kept his cool and addressed the police officers. “Look, sir, is there a text or isn’t there?” he said. “There is a text, and it has various interpretations. Yes, it does. Some people say it’s forbidden and the case was closed with Salim, the freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa, who was breastfed by his master’s wife, and there are people who say no, it’s a ruling that continues and is still valid today, on the grounds that Aisha did it.”
“But, general, mind you don’t get the idea that breastfeeding means a mouth on a nipple,” said Hatem.
They burst out laughing.
“Really? So what is it, if it doesn’t mean a mouth on a nipple?” one of them asked.
“No, some people say she pours the milk into a cup and the man drinks it. That’s what happened with Sahla,” said Hatem.
“Sahla as well?”
“No, we’re not going to make fun of the Companions of the Prophet.”
“God forbid. You’ll get us all into trouble.”
At that stage, perhaps out of boredom, Khaled Abu Hadid wanted to change the subject, so he asked for Sheikh Said Sorour to sing a prayer, since by then he had had his fill of food and hashish.
After as much throat-clearing as you’d expect to hear during a whole night in a hospital ward for people with chest complaints, Sorour set to it. The amazing thing is that this wooden oaf of a man produced sounds from his throat that might have come down from heaven. All those sitting there—the corrupt, the debauched, the fraudsters, the flatterers, the servants, and the retainers—could still find space in their hearts for something pure and sublime. They stopped still to listen.
Muhammad, the Lord of the Two Worlds, Lord of Man and the Djinn,
Lord of the Two Groups, Arabs and non-Arabs,
Our Prophet who commands and prohibits,
No one is more truthful
In saying yes or saying no
He is the friend whose intercession is sought
Against every fright that threatens
His voice came from the very depths of his chest, then he bowed his head in silence for a moment’s rest. His singing had breathed fresh air into the hall. Al-Busiri’s love poetry, addressed to the Prophet he adored, was like a soothing lullaby or a trickle of pure water. Then Sheikh Sorour resumed, giving Hatem a rope on which he could climb up to heaven, shaking off the folly of the world and the filth that came from being famous.
He surpassed the other prophets in physical and moral qualities
Nor did they approach him in either learning or generosity
All of them sought to obtain from the Prophet of God
A handful of water from the ocean or a sip from the continuous rains.
They kept to their place with respect to him
When it came to a drop of learning or a trace of wisdom.
Hatem, deeply moved, cried: “O God, O God, Our Lord the Prophet.”
The prayer raised the spirits of the audience and some of them, spellbound, muttered the words to themselves. Others signaled their approval and admiration. For others the hymn reminded them painfully of their own failings and allowed them for a few moments to revel in closeness to God and the glory of the Prophet
.
For he is the one whose essence and outward form are perfect
The creator of life chose him as His beloved
Unmatched by anyone who shares his virtues
Because the jewel of goodness in him is undivided
Attribute as much honor as you like to his person
Attribute as much grandeur as you like to his power
Because the virtue of the Prophet of God has no limits
That anyone with the power of speech could put into words.
Hatem stood up, sad and moved. He turned to Sheikh Mukhtar.
“Bless our Prophet, the ancestor of Sheikh Mukhtar, the grandson of the grandsons of the Prophet and his family,” he said.
There was something mysterious about Mukhtar el-Husseini that made Hatem like him. Although other Sufi sheikhs claimed to be simple and modest, in fact they looked down on people. They ensconced themselves in their zawiyas, aloof and supercilious. Their disciples willingly subjugated themselves, like slaves to their master or sheep to their shepherd. On top of that, important people, the rich of the community and people in high office, thronged at the feet of the head of the Sufi order they belonged to. All this made the sheikh, any sheikh, think he was more than just a normal human being. But Sheikh Mukhtar didn’t have that covert snobbery or that arrogance that dressed itself up as self-denial for the sake of other people. Hatem often noticed this growing sense of privilege among the Sufi leaders that he met and it was not the privileged status of the kind enjoyed by film stars, artists, and soccer players, who had worked hard for their fame, which could rise and fall unpredictably. Their privileged status was temporary and piecemeal. It was also dependent on their conduct and everyone was watching them closely. But the fame of a Sufi sheikh in his order and in his narrow, limited world was deeper and had more influence on him and on his social milieu. The head of a Sufi order was not required to work for his fame; it was fame that came without the slightest effort. His fame was part of him, and his privileged status didn’t come through people choosing him. It came through the man’s ancestry, his lineage. Some of them traced their descent to the family of the Prophet. Hatem was well aware that he and other well-known television preachers, and even the stars of television serials, might not always be treated as special in the rough and tumble of ordinary life, when they were with their families and within the four walls of their homes, for example. The head of a Sufi order, on the other hand, was privileged even when he was in the bath, because everyone treated him as if he had special gifts. A special aura surrounded him wherever he went and whoever he lived with and talked to. This meant that a Sufi sheikh wasn’t a Sufi at all, but rather someone that people looked up to with expectations. He was molded by people and by the loyalty of his disciples. This created a massive barrier and made the man’s Sufism suspect.