In May 2007 Dr. Izzat Atiyya, lecturer at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, issued a "fatwa" that suggested that male and female colleagues could use breastfeeding to get around a religious ban on being alone together. The "fatwa" said that if a woman fed a male colleague "directly from her breast" at least five times they would establish a family bond and thus be allowed to be alone together at work. "Breast feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage," he ruled. "A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breastfed."