| Submit your comments on this article | ||
| Olde Tyme Religion | ||
| Kissing minor sin, Egyptian religious scholar says | ||
| 2008-11-18 | ||
| To kiss or not to kiss. That is the question the Egyptian scholar who condoned kissing between unmarried couples is seeking to answer in his new book of Islamic interpretation. Islamic intellectual Gamal al-Banna became embroiled in controversy after he issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, sanctioning kissing between unmarried males and females and has written a new book to set the record straight. Al-Azhar scholars accused Banna of promoting vice last March when, in an interview with the Egyptian al-Saa channel, he issued a fatwa permitting unmarried people to kiss. Later Banna appeared on Al-Arabiya and backpedaled, saying that Islam does not permit unmarried kissing but that it is not one of its grave sins.
Banna, brother to Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, said kissing is a reaction to parents' inflexibility with suitors, which inevitably leads to committing even greater sins. "If I say kisses are a reaction, this doesn't mean I am allowing them," Banna told AlArabiya.net. "But it is a minor sin that results from instinctive human weakness and that can be redressed by good deeds." Banna added that he based his research on the Quran and the theories of prominent scholars about the concept of minor sins. He also explained that if redemption atones for major sins then the same applies to minor ones. He offered the example of fornication, noting that whatever happens prior to the act of intercourse is considered a minor sin. In the book Banna, criticizes the way Muslim societies belittle feelings of love and beauty and how Muslims are portrayed as devoid of emotions. "The book provides a religious analysis of kissing and deals with it as a human frailty, nothing more," Banna said.
Sheikh accused Banna of giving youth the green light to have open relationships and argued that they would not stop at kisses. "This could lead to fornication and possibly pregnancy. Parentages will be mixed and society will have no rules," he said. Sheikh argued that kisses cannot be considered minor sins since they could develop to major ones. "Then we will regret it when it is too late" he added. | ||
| Posted by:Fred |
| #7 Don't mess with goats, or monkeys, either. That is my fatwa. Ima not jokin'. |
| Posted by: Al Aska Paul, Resident Imam 2008-11-18 21:08 |
| #6 It all depends on where you kiss your goat, really, there's a fatwa about that. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-11-18 13:31 |
| #5 kissing your goat is a little sick. I have to concur with the wise man |
| Posted by: Frank G 2008-11-18 08:00 |
| #4 Kissing haram. Rape halal. What a |
| Posted by: ed 2008-11-18 06:34 |
| #3 You are right anon5089. Let's take a look at the five pillars of Islam. 1) Shativah: Proclam that Muhammad was the nicest, smartest and prettiest. 2) Prayer: Five times a day proclaim that Muhammad was the nicest, smartest and prettiest 3) Ramadan: Fast for the sake of it. BTW, even in South of Finland there is ever enough daylight to read during teh summer. And too much for a Mulim being allowed to eat and drink if Ramadan is in summer. 4) Hadj: Fill the pockets of the master race (and in his times, of the master tribe) even if you are a Bangladeshi. 5) Zakat: That is the only one who could e deemed as "positive" but notice that charity is limited. Give 3% of your money to the poor, if you can afford it. And then there is what some Muslim scholars call the Sixth Pillar, the unofficial one: Jihad. Make war on ten infidels so the rich can get new sex toys and the master race can get more money through the Hadj. Notice that between those five pillars there is nothing like "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou sall not lift false testimony". Nothing, except for the quite limited precept of Zakat contributing to a better world. And no "difficult" precept like the Christian precept of putting the other cheek when you are slapped. While we are at it, notice that official (that is saducean judaism) was more about rites than moral. The moral dimension was not in the Bible in the oral tradition that sadduceans rejected (in fact they rejected everything in the Bible buit the first five books) but that the pharisian movement (later to become rabiinc judaism) vindicated. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-11-18 06:04 |
| #2 Truly satanic I would hazard a guess that satanism is MORE transcendent than Islam. If there is such a thing a satanism in the first place. Islam is theologically/confessionally incoherent, IMO. |
| Posted by: Free Radical 2008-11-18 05:47 |
| #1 The 254-page book, entitled The Issue of Kisses and Other Interpretations The mind boogles. Really, most of what I've read about islma, and the little I understood from it, leads me to think this is not a religion, meaning there's no transcendence, no faith per se... but it's rather a LAW, a set of rules aiming at controlling the very least of human behavior (with a marked insistance on mictions, bodily fluids, bodily functions), and all of this is absolutely involutive, spiralling down into an ever more encompassing and absurd set of LAW... until there is nothing more left of the thinking, human mind. Truly satanic. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2008-11-18 05:18 |