The website of Dar Al-Ifta Al-Masriya (the Egyptian House of Issuing Fatwas) is a popular online database, which logs millions of Fatwas in the form of Q&A. Muslims from all over the world submit an inquiry about a certain personal, familial or social issue; and religious scholars respond with a ruling. According to this article, the “Dar” has issued 465,000 Fatwas in 2010 alone! I chose the one below from a huge compilation of absurd topics.

The Question:

This Fatwa is divided into two parts. The first question was whether a divorcee woman is allowed to have the fertilized egg, which she had stored in a fertility clinic prior to her divorce, planted in her womb. The second question is the same except that it inquires about a widow rather than a divorcee.

For the first part, Dr. Ali Goma Mohammed (the “GRAND Mufti”) explains that in the case of a divorcee whether the divorce is irrevocable or not is crucial. In other words, if a man says to his wife “I divorce you” three times, it is an irrevocable divorce. If he says “I divorce you” once, it is revocable. In the latter case, [the woman] can be taken back” by the husband, and marital bonds are not broken.

The Ruling:

In the case of an irrevocable divorce the ex-wife is prohibited from planting egg because now that marital bonds are broken “she becomes foreign to [the ex-husband]”; and in Sharia Law, planting the egg of another female or an egg fertilized by a man other than her husband is considered “unlawful”.
In the case of a revocable divorce, the woman is allowed to plant the egg, only if the husband gives permission.

As for a widow, the same “reasoning” applies. A woman is prohibited from planting her own egg, fertilized by her dead husband, because, according to Sharia Law, death breaks marital relations and therefore the husband becomes a stranger to the wife.

Older Fatwa of the Day articles:

Fatwa of the day #1 — Fatwa of the day #2 — Fatwa of the day #3 — Fatwa of the day #4 — Fatwa of the day #5 — Fatwa of the day #6 — Fatwa of the day #7

(Read “A Reflection on Drama-Loving Islam [part 1]”)

A reader of Free Thinking Lebanon sent me the link of the video below after reading my post “Lebanon: it can’t be 2010?!”. He wrote:

“[…] This link is for a funny video of a guy faking a cry during Ashura celebration. I hope you’ll enjoy it”

I watched the video and it is hilarious. I’m not sure, however, if it is during a Ashura celebration; it looks like a funeral to me. But who cares? The clip is still funny as hell.

All religious ceremonies contain some sort of drama; and when taking part in these rituals and celebrations, some religious folks become really emotional and the dramatic behavior they demonstrate is in deed honest. However, many of these “spiritual” reactions are simply FAKE, Watch how the cheikh (in brown), in the video below, reacts once he spots the camera!

Drama Loving Islam

I’ve always wondered why so many non-Lebanese people hold an extremely pessimistic view of Lebanon. I guess I’ve known the reason all along: religious extremists. But since Lebanon is my home country, sometimes I tend to ignore this sad reality, and convince myself that Lebanon is the most developed country in the middle east as well as the one with the most open-minded people—which is true to some extent. However, every time I put on the news, the same hopeless and sad feeling takes over me. It’s impossible for one to escape from his or her own reality.

Lebanon is a really strange country. On one hand, a large part of society consists of hard-working, civilized folks who enjoy their own lives, and respect that of others. On the other hand… (I’ll leave it to the video below to fill in the rest)

Source: CNN

A couple of days a go, Google launched an interesting search application, Google NGram Viewer, used for graphing how one word, or a combination of five words, have been trending (by word frequency) in books since the 1500’s.

I played around with a few word combinations. Here’s one of my evil results; It shows the trend for the word “god” from 1800 till 2008.

I’m glad to announce that this blog is back online as of today..
Although if you read the last post, I had already said that I would be back to blogging but I wasn’t able to! The reason was that back then I had been very busy and I had to decide between taking a long break from Free Thinking Lebanon or losing my mind. Also those who follow(ed) me on Twitter (my new twitter ID is Eli_FTL) might have realized that I haven’t been active there either. I hope now I’ll be able to manage my time more efficiently and keep FTL running..