Sharia Alert from India, via the Telegraph, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
India's leading female tennis player has been subjected to a fatwa by a Muslim cleric for wearing short skirts and revealing tops on the international tennis circuit.Sania Mirza, 18, who became the first Indian woman to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam at the US Open last week, is hugely popular in India.
The fatwa - in effect, a demand that she cover up - was issued by a senior cleric of the Sunni Ulema Board, a little-known group. Similar fatwas have been issued against Mirza, who comes from a devout Muslim family, but none has ever gained popular support among India's 130 million Muslims.
"The dress she wears on the tennis courts…leaves nothing to the imagination," Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui told The Hindustan Times. "She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence."
The vilification or brutality she could suffer because of this fatwa, however, doesn't seem to occur to him as having a corrupting effect of its own.
Posted at September 10, 2005 12:38 AM