Muslims breast feed in public!?
6March 5, 2013 by farbolino
I guess there isn’t too much suspense as to the punch line of the story since it’s in the title, but I’ll tell the story anyways.
Today while taking a minibus from Kota Kinabalu to Kinabalu park in Malaysian Borneo, I was seated (more like squished) next to two women and two little girls. One of the girls was about 3 years old and wearing a hijab (headscarf); which by the way Allah doesn’t require of girls until puberty. The other girl was roughly a year to a year and a half old and sitting on her mothers lap. Thank god she wasn’t wearing a hijab too.
I was discreetly able to take a picture of the young girl wearing the headscarf.
So, if a mother is so extreme as to not only cover every part of her own body, but feel it necessary to cover every part of her little child’s body, you could possibly imagine my surprise when I look over to see this woman’s breast in the smaller child’s mouth. Perhaps it was even a little bit more shocking to me since we were sitting next to each other, touching, and my bare arm was about 3 inches from her breast.
Just to make things clear; I have no issues whatsoever as to women breast feeding in public. I just never imagined this was the sort of thing extremely religious Muslims did.
She most have done a good job though, as the baby was passed out for the rest of the journey. 😉
Wandering American 
It does seem odd, but consistency is not a human virtue. Think of it as the mirror image of places in the U.S.
Muslims believe that their children have a right upon the parents to be breastfed till age two. Could others have seen what you saw of her body? I have many sisters that breastfeed in public but their bigger hijab covers up everything.
Only me and the woman on her other side would have been able to see. Again, I see nothing wrong with breat feeding in public, but was surprised with it that a woman of Muslim origin would do so.
There is a wide variety of us muslims out there and wide variety of cultures we come from. I totally see where you are coming from! I would be like, woah sister, more power to yah but I don’t need to actually see your boob.
I know many sisters that start their little girls in practicing wearing the hijab in public early on. Sometimes they take it off them selves and usually the rest of their outfit isn’t necessarily considered hijab. The concept and reasoning behind starting them younger is so they can become used to it and understand the difference between themselves in private settings and at public settings. Telling a awkward and hormonal 11 to 14 year old that they have to wear hijab when they never did before can be quite the interesting and difficult phase.
I can understand that…but whatever happened to letting a child have a childhood? In my opinion small kids should be care free.