Palestinian Paper Reports Religious Condemnation of Women Smokers

Mar 20, 06:27 AM

Current Headlines: Excerpt from report by Palestinian newspaper Al-Risalah on 5 March

[Report by Lamis al-Hims: "Women's smoking between blind imitation and defying Islamic customs"]

Forty-year-old AM started smoking three years ago. She says that she has not married yet because she was nursing her sick father and, after that, her half-paralysed brother. All that time she was confined to the house, which prevented her from completing her education and looking for a job.

She says: "After my father and brother died, I felt that I gave my life away for others, spending it serving them. After that I met a number of women from high-class families who were all smokers. They offered me cigarettes every time we met until smoking became part of my life."

She points out that she is ashamed of smoking in front of her relatives and acquaintances and even her brothers and sisters, despite her old age and her feeling that they know, because she considers that smoking is strange to her family's customs. None of them have ever talked to her about this issue out of consideration for her situation.

Fifty-two-year-old SD has been smoking narghile for more than 15 years, even before coming to the Gaza Strip. She points out that this was the norm in Jordan and before that in Kuwait, where she lived prior to coming to Gaza.

SD, whose children are university students, says that her story with the narghile started when her husband asked her to try it one day. After that she started smoking it with a cup of coffee every morning. Her husband did not object to this, but rather he encouraged her. Last year on Mother's Day, her daughters gave her a nargihle as a present.

She says she only smokes in front of her family and people who are very close because other people might denounce such behaviour.

In this same context, we see that many young women in our society start smoking as a rebellion against traditions. One day, I was surprised to see a number of young women smoking. One of them had her brother with her. He was hardly 13 years old. She gave him a cigarette so that he would keep what he saw a secret.

One of them said: "Cigarettes have great importance for me; when I smoke, I make everyone understand that I am different, unique, and free to do what I want."

HK is a high school student who has been smoking for three years, claiming that she is facing special circumstances at home. She says she started smoking after her father died. She had no one else except one married brother who was suffering from psychosis.

She adds: "He treated me and his wife very harshly so we started smoking secretly. He always refused to receive any treatment and used to beat me up. When I turned 17, his psychosis deteriorated. Consequently, he started receiving treatment and improved. Then, my mother found out that my sister-in-law and I smoked. Following attempts by my mother to make me stop smoking, I quit together with my sister-in-law." She stresses that her bad psychological condition was the reason for her smoking.

[Passage omitted]

Religion's opinion

Shaykh Al-Qaradawi states in a previous religious ruling on smoking that it is a taboo because it is bad for health, causes cancer, and is considered a slow self-annihilation, and also because Allah says: "Do not kill yourselves because Allah has mercy on you." [Koranic verse]

In addition, smoking harms people sitting around smokers thus unwillingly making them smokers too. The Prophet says in his Hadith: "Do not harm or cause any harm."

Smoking also causes stinking breath and has a bad effect. Islam allowed good things and prohibited bad ones. Smoking is also a wasteful act.

Smoking will remain a ghost haunting everyone, both men and women, because of its danger to public health. Despite repeated warnings by health experts on smoking and its bad effects, which are not limited to the smokers but also to those around them, it remains popular because of the promoters' temptations and the advertisements on which the tobacco companies spend huge sums of money.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Middle East. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.