Johnny mailed to me, and I tried to publish by e-mail-

Tim Blair has found what one reader calls a gold mine the ummah’s answer to Ann Landers, Ask the Imam. If you go by this site, the Muslim world seems to be geared towards the sort of person who has to count all the table and chair legs in the room before leaving, and who sorts her used twisties by color and length. Sample question

:Is the embroidery stitching technique called “cross-stitch” forbidden in Islam ?

I am a muslim women who likes to do embroidery at home. One of those embroidery is called “cross-stitching” which consist to do “X” stitching on a cloth in order to have as a finished product a geometric pattern or floral pattern on many parts of the cloth (like a tablecloth for example). You have to criss-cross strands of cotton in order to make a pattern. The reason i am asking this question is that a sister came forward and told me that it was forbidden because the stitching technique looks like crosses (actually it’s little X’s that you make wich doesn’t appear much because of the tickness of the strands).The patterns that i do are not of human or animal kinds. Only geometric and floral. Allah knows best.

Answer:

It is permissible to do the ‘cross stitch’ technique in embroidery.

And Allah Ta’ala Knows Best

Mufti Ebrahim Desai

FATWA DEPT.

Kind Regards,

John O

but I didn’t like the formatting and the links didn’t show up, so I ripped it up and started again.