A prominent Muslim cleric in Turkey has called upon frequent masturbators to cease all masturbatory activities, lest they find themselves with pregnant hands in the afterlife.
Mücahid Cihad Han was faced with the problem of one particular man who called into his television problem to confess constant masturbation. The man said he kept masturbating despite being married, and despite undertaking the Umrah–which is a pilgrimage to Mecca that, in contrast with the Hajj, Muslims can take at any time of the year.
Han’s response was a beauty:
Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over its rights.
This begs the question of whether a man’s hands are full of latent eggs–eggs that, once the man reaches the afterlife, are activated, and can be impregnated by the ghost sperm of masturbation sessions long past.
(There’s a quiet beauty to the phrase “hands pregnant in the afterlife,” too. Though Han may have said “pregnant hands in heaven,” depending on the translation. “Pregnant hands in heaven” isn’t bad, either.)
The difficulty here, as numerous outlets have reported, is that masturbation isn’t really addressed by the Qu’ran, so clerics and scholars are forced to concoct their own interpretations of Islamic law on the topic. It’s something of a taboo issue in Islam. Most scholars simply state that masturbation is disliked (“makruh”)–though Ibn al-Qayyim, a prominent 14th century interpreter, had this to say:
If a man is turned between continued desire or releasing it, and if this man does not have a wife and he fears he will suffer because of this (someone like a prisoner, or a pauper), then it is permissible for him to masturbate.
Apparently, the same caveat does not apply to women.
(Photo credits: Hands via Flickr)
