All I can say today is, “Thank Ceiling Cat I’m not a Muslim.” For there’s nothing I like to see more when I’m hungry than a sign that says “all you can eat” (or, in England, the characteristically more polite “all you care to eat”). It is a Rule of Eating if you like good food, you like lots of good food. A true gourmet will also be a gourmand. If I’m in Louisiana, give me a table, a pitcher of beer, and someone who will pour endless buckets of boiled crawfish onto the butcher paper covering my table. The same goes for crabs in Baltimore and oysters in Charleston. That is why, when I’m in a strange town and hungry, I will ask restaurant advice from strangers who are, well, a bit portly.

Sadly, the Saudis may no longer have this option, for, according to Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-owned media outlet located in Dubai, a Saudi cleric has issued a fatwa against all-you-can eat buffets:

The cleric, Saleh al-Fawzan, recently issued a fatwa through a kingdom-based Quranic TV station prohibiting open buffets, saying that the value and quantity of what is sold should be pre-determined before it is purchased. “Whoever enters the buffet and eats for 10 or 50 riyals without deciding the quantity they will eat is violating Sharia (Islamic) law,” said Fawzan on al-Atheer channel.

I’d like to know the part of Sharia law that dictates this, but I’m sure there’s something in there that can be interpreted this way. I guess “enough to fill me up” doesn’t qualify as a “quantity” according to that law. Or perhaps al-Fawzan just got a case of heartburn.

Affronted (and hungry) Muslims, however, are striking back:

Using the Twitter hashtag “prohibiting-open-buffet” (in Arabic), some of the site’s users criticized Fawzan’s fatwa. “Restaurants will be ruined if they didn’t quantify the food they sold. This negates the sheikh’s premise that the quantity is unknown,” said on Twitter user. [JAC: I don’t understand what this means.] “This is not Quran just a mere fatwa, if you want to follow it, you are a free man but you can not impose it on others,” wrote another. One user sarcastically wrote: “Congratulations! Open buffets have made it in the list for what is forbidden for us.”

But there are also supporters of this fatwa. Fortunately, fatwas are not binding on all Muslims, for interpretations of sharia law vary from place to place. Were I a Muslim, I’d just laugh and take another helping.

h/t: Grania