Islamic Cleric Bans Bananas and Cucumbers to Women: Does Anyone Else Smell Fish Up in Here?
So apparently twitter is all abuzz with, well, a rather “SAY WHAAA…” fatwa or command which an alleged, unknown Islamic cleric has recently made.
I honestly came across this story and just had my extreme “GOAT CHEESE STINK-FACE” look plastered on my face for a good 5 minutes. And then I decided to move on because, really, this wouldn’t be the first time that I’ve heard some undeniably idiotic, chauvinistic, borderline offensive claim made in the name of, or in association with, my religion. A claim which, actually, does not take ANY of its credence or credibility from my religion whatsoever. These kinds of things are beyond annoying, but it is what it is: Men who try to manipulate or even fabricate parts of something as sacred and fragile as a religion to serve their own means and to insure that they are secure in their position as the alpha male. That’s all. Once you get that and make peace with it, you can tune their rubbish out knowing exactly what is religion and what clearly isn’t (and where to really go for answers if you want ‘em).
So I read this and chucked it into the proverbial mental dumpster, but then I found out what a HUGE response it was getting on twitter and facebook and the amount of people that were responding to it that I thought I should as well. The perception of Islam is already, and quite obviously, very fragile and, in some cases, quite tarnished. If there was a chance that this idiocy was going to add even more hate and confusion to my religion then you bet I’m speaking up.
Obviously, if you’re able to employ any of your intellectual faculties beyond “2+2=4″ then you know that this is crazy talk. Humans–not just women–are clearly not animals. We don’t just see a slightly phallic structure and get aroused. Especially not when we’re hungry. When you’re hungry ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS STUFFING YOUR FACE, OKAY? We’ve got brains that can do long division. We’re a actually a little deeper than just disturbing food associations. And, hell, if you do have the audacity to make this kind of claim then your focus should really be more fixed on our male brethren because of the fact that their brain physiology is actually more geared towards sex and they are more visually stimulated creatures than women are in general. But, of course, even that is bogus. There is really no way that the religion of thousands of great men of science and knowledge (who also staunchly believed in this religion), and a religion which actually makes no mention itself of anything CLOSE to this insanity, could ever condone such a bogus claim.
So since everyone with at least a semi-functional brain already knows this, I won’t go into it any further.
I’d just like to address the alleged credibility of the source of this claim just to show how easy it can truly be for ANYONE to say anything they want to and then plaster words like “Islamic” or “cleric” to its tail-end.
Because I was so curious about who in this universe could ever logically think up such a claim I tried to do a little extra “googling” on the matter. And I have to say I didn’t come up with much.
On this bikyamasr link (which I provided above) it states that “el-Senousa” news has reported on this mysteriously unnamed and completely unidentified cleric (except for the fact that he’s in “Europe”–NO SPECIFIC COUNTRY NECESSARY). This news source has allegedly quoted him in saying that “if women wish to eat these food items [bananas and cucumbers], 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” as well as a bevy of other side-splitting remarks on the subject. I won’t mention them all because, well, it could literally lead to my lungs collapsing from the sheer amount of heaving laughter.
Funny thing is when you try to look up this “el-Senousa” news source WHY, ITS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND. NOWHERE. No elSenousa.com/.net/.org/.ANYTHING. No other articles, no images of this news source, no idea who runs it, and not a clue on where in the world it is. In fact, the only thing that you will find when you do try to look for this news source is this bikyamasr link.
Curious? Well, you wouldn’t be the only one.
Clearly, there is something very wrong with this “article” (if you can even call it that). It carries absolutely no weight when it comes to credible fact-checking. Nothing. No names, no specific information, and most of all, a “source” that seems to have been eaten up by a black hole.
Could this just be a way for this Egyptian news site to create some buzz which goes against a certain Islamist gain in the recent Egyptian elections?
Hmm…
So, moral of the day: if it sounds too crazy to be true its worth looking up because, well, it probably gets even more crazy.
All my love!
