THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Women in Gaza have been banned from smoking hookah pipes in public after Hamas ruled it was against tradition and lead[s] to divorce.
The sudden edict, the latest in an often arbitrary campaign to improve moral standards in the territory, threatens to bring to an end centuries of tradition.
Without warning, bearded members of Hamas, the Islamist group which controls Gaza, arrived in cafés and restaurants over the weekend to inform proprietors of the ban.
Amid uncertainty about the details of the decision, a large number of institutions stopped serving the scented tobacco altogether, prompting outrage among patrons, many of whom went home in disgust.
Hamas officials subsequently clarified that only women were forbidden from smoking the narghile, the water pipe better known in the West as the hookah or hubble-bubble [hubbly-bubbly].
"The police have decided to ban women from smoking narghile in open, public places because it is against our customs, traditions and social norms," said Ihab al-Hussein, a spokesman for the Hamas interior ministry. >>> Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem | Sunday, July 18, 2010
