Fatwa
[4] Over the centuries, Sunni muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies, while Shia jurists in Iran asserted an autonomous authority starting from the early modern era.
At that point, the rapidly expanding Muslim community turned to Muhammad's Companions, as the most authoritative voices among them, for religious guidance, and some of them are reported to have issued pronouncements on a wide range of subjects.
The 14th century jurist Taqi al-Din Ibn Taymiyya was known for his methodology of issuing fatwas through direct research of the Qur'an and Hadith, rather than being restrained by the mechanism of the madhhabs (legal schools).
Explaining Ibn Taymiyya's approach to issue fatwas, his student Al-Dhahabi writes: "He was well informed of the legal views of the [Prophet's] companions and their followers, and he rarely talked about a subject without quoting the four schools of the imams.
He has compiled a work entitled Politics According to Divine Law for Establishing Order for Sovereign and Subjects and a book [called] Removing the Reproach from the Learned Imams.... For some years now he has not issued fatwas (legal opinions) according to a specific school, rather he bases these on the proof he has ascertained himself.
If a party in a dispute was not able to obtain a fatwa supporting their position, they would be unlikely to pursue their case in court, opting for informal mediation instead, or abandoning their claim altogether.
[15] Sometimes muftis could be petitioned for a fatwa relating to a court judgment that has already been passed, acting as an informal appeals process, but the extent of this practice and its mechanism varied across history.
[16] While in most of the Islamic world judges were not required to consult muftis by any political authority, in Muslim Spain this practice was mandatory, so that a judicial decision was considered invalid without prior approval by a legal specialist.
A jurist could lead a teaching circle, conduct a fatwa session, and adjudicate court cases in a single day, devoting his night hours to writing a legal treatise.
According to the adab al-mufti manuals, a mufti must be an adult, Muslim, trusted and reliable, of good character and sound mind, an alert and rigorous thinker, trained as a jurist, and not a sinner.
In practice, an aspiring jurist would normally study for several years with one or several recognized scholars, following a curriculum that included Arabic grammar, hadith, law and other religious sciences.
[2] In practice, the vast majority of jurists who completed the lengthy curriculum in linguistic and religious sciences required to obtain the qualification to issue fatwas were men.
[4] While the office of the mufti was gradually subsumed into the state bureaucracy in much of the Sunni Muslim world, Shia religious establishment followed a different path in Iran starting from the early modern era.
[1] Fatwas by the Ottoman chief mufti were also solicited by the rulers to lend religious legitimacy to new social and economic practices, such as financial and penal laws enacted outside of sharia, printing of nonreligious books (1727) and vaccination (1845).
[5] At other times muftis wielded their influence independently of the ruler, and several sultans in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire were dethroned as a result of fatwas issued by influential jurists.
[5] Public fatwas were also used to dispute doctrinal matters, and in some case to proclaim that certain groups or individuals who professed to be Muslim were to be excluded from the Islamic community (a practice known as takfir).
[5] Under European colonial rule, the institution of dar al-ifta was established in a number of madrasas (law colleges) as a centralized place for issuing of fatwas, and these organizations to a considerable extent replaced independent muftis as religious guides for the general population.
[6] The most notorious result of disregarding classical jurisprudence are the fatwas of militant extremists who have interpreted the Quran and hadith as supporting suicide bombings, indiscriminate killing of bystanders, and declaration of self-professed Muslims as unbelievers (takfir).
This is commonly accomplished by application of various traditional legal doctrines such as the maqasid (objectives) of sharia, maslaha (public interest) and darura (necessity), in place of adhering to the letter of scriptural sources.
In it Hurgronje denounced his German colleagues, who he felt instigated the jihad proclamation in an irresponsible appeal to an antiquated concept that threatened the project of modernizing the Muslim world.
The article was widely circulated in an English translation and its accuracy continues to be debated by historians, who acknowledge both the German influence and the internal political calculations of the Ottoman government underlying the proclamation.
[5] In 2004 Yusuf al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa calling for boycott of Israeli and American products, arguing that buying these goods would strengthen the "enemy" fighting against Muslims in the struggle over Palestine.
[5] The Amman Message was a statement, signed in 2005 in Jordan by nearly 200 prominent Islamic jurists, which served as a "counter-fatwa" against a widespread use of takfir (excommunication) by jihadist groups to justify jihad against rulers of Muslim-majority countries.
These organizations aim to provide fatwas that address the concerns of Muslim minorities, helping them to comply with sharia, while stressing compatibility of Islam with diverse modern contexts.
[25][5] The ECRF draws on all major schools of Sunni law as well as other traditional legal principles, such as concern for the public good, local custom, and the prevention of harm, to derive fatwas suitable for life in Europe.
[25] For example, a 2001 ECRF ruling allowed a woman who had converted to Islam to remain married without requiring her husband's conversion, based in part on the existence of European laws and customs under which women are guaranteed the freedom of religion.
Early in the 20th century, the reformist Islamic scholar Rashid Rida responded to thousands of queries from around the Muslim world on a variety of social and political topics in the regular fatwa section of his Cairo-based journal Al-Manar.
[7][6] In the late 20th century, when the Grand Mufti of Egypt Sayyid Tantawy issued a fatwa allowing interest banking, the ruling was vigorously debated in the Egyptian press by both religious scholars and lay intellectuals.
Modern fatwas also deal with a wide variety of other topics, including insurance, sex-change operations, moon exploration, beer drinking,[7] abortion in the case of fatal foetal abnormalities, or males and females sharing workplaces.
The questioner is now also increasingly likely to be female, and in the modern world Muslim women tend to address muftis directly rather than conveying their query through a male relative as in the past.
