Lahore, May 29: A fatwa issued by an Islamic scholar, permitting women to breastfeed adults with whom they work, has led to his suspension from Cairo's al-Azhar University, the world's leading Sunni university.

According to a report in The Australian, Izzat Atiyaa had issued the fatwa as a way around the prohibition in Islamic religious law against a woman working in private premises with a man who was not her close relative.

Breastfeeding, he argued, would create a familial relationship under Islamic law.

"A man and a woman who are alone together are not (necessarily) having sex but this possibility exists and breastfeeding provides a solution to this problem (by) transforming the bestial relationship between two people into a religious relationship based on (religious) duties," Dr Atiyaa told the Egyptian newspaper al-Watani al-Yawm.In Islamic tradition, breastfeeding at infancy establishes a degree of familial relationship between nurse and child even if there is no biological relationship.

Dr Atiyaa, according to the Daily Times, argued in his fatwa that if an adult male was nursed by a female co-worker it would likewise establish a familial bond that would permit them to work side by side without raising suspicion of illicit sex.

Dr Atiyaa headed al-Azhar University's department dealing with hadith. He said he had based his ruling on one such tradition according to which, at the Prophet's order, a man named Salem was breastfed by the wife of another disciple.

Nevertheless, his ruling evoked almost universal rejection among Muslim scholars and in the popular Egyptian press.

Al-Azhar University formed a committee of hadith experts, who dismissed his ruling, and the university administration ordered him to publish a retraction. He complied.

However, his apology was deemed insufficient by the head of the al-Azhar Supreme Council, Sheik Muhammed Sayyid Tantawi, a widely respected figure who is the highest spiritual authority in Sunni Islam.

The university then decided to suspend Dr Atiyaa, pending further investigation.