Memoirs of an American Muslim V.02

First off, what is a Fatwa anyways?! This word, which Western media loves to throw around (think Khomeni’s Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, etc.) is often times used with a negative connotation. But, can Fatwa’s be positive? Do they have to always involve the possible death of another individual. Let’s take a look at this and more issues in this and subsequent posts.

From Islam-online.net we get the following:

In his book, Al-Fatwa Bayna al-indibat Wa-at-tasayyub, the eminent Muslim scholar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, states the following:“Lexically, the Arabic word fatwa means to give a satisfactory answer regarding a certain issue.”

From this, we can certainly agree that a fatwa can pertain to any type of religious ruling, whether it be something as simple as a question regarding the type of clothing one can wear in the ritual prayers, or something as complex as what kinds of ingredients one can, and cannot consume in pre-processed foods in non-Muslim lands.

Many Muslims the world over, look to Fatawa’s for religous rulings and therefore guidance on issues which they face in their daily lives. A Muslim living in Egypt, for example, may require a fatwa from a Muslim scholar on the rulings in dealing with tourists to his country, since Egypt is a common tourist atraction amongst Arab countries for Westerners. An example of what this Egyptian man might ask a scholar would be if he was allowed to charge a higher price for tourists for the same service that would be given to a local (a common practice in my ethnically native country of Iran). A Muslim scholar residing in Egypt (we will get to the importance of this point of “residing in the country the Fatwa is given later) would issue his ruling on the issue, or in other words a Fatwa.

I would like to stop at this point, and show to my non-Muslim readers, that the word Fatwa was just used in a way that in no form was negative. As we have previously mentioned, a Fatwa is a simple religious ruling on an issue relating to Islam. Fatwa’s cover a range of issues, also as previously mentioned, and if one were to look at a collection of Fatwa’s from Muslim scholars, one would see that they would cover just about every aspect of life an individual would experience. That is the very nature of religious rulings.

I would like to end this entry, with another qoute from Islam-online.net. In subsequent posts, I will continue the discussions of Fatwa’s, and try to clarify some misconceptions, and misunderstandings amongst Muslims as well as those of other faiths.

It stands to reason that fatwa is not an easy task, but rather an arduous one. This is because the one who commits himself to issuing fatwas acts on behalf of Allah’s Messengers and Prophets. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) is reported to have said: “Scholars are the heirs of Prophets, and Prophets neither left behind dinars nor dirhams (Arab coins); rather they left knowledge. He who acquires knowledge has really gained something of great value.”