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Role of fatwas

Main article: Fatwa

The spread of codified state laws and Western-style legal education in the modern Muslim world has displaced muftis from their traditional role of clarifying and elaborating the laws applied in courts. Instead, modern fatwas have increasingly served to advise the general public on other aspects of sharia, particularly questions regarding religious rituals and everyday life. Modern fatwas also deal with topics as diverse as insurance, sex-change operations, moon exploration and beer drinking. Most Muslim-majority states have established national organizations devoted to issuing fatwas, and these organizations to a considerable extent replaced independent muftis as religious guides for the general population. State-employed muftis generally promote a vision of Islam that is compatible with state law of their country.

Modern public and political fatwas have addressed and sometimes sparked controversies in the Muslim world and beyond. Ayatollah Khomeini's proclamation condemning Salman Rushdie to death for his novel The Satanic Verses is credited with bringing the notion of fatwa to world's attention. Together with later militant fatwas, it has contributed to the popular misconception of the fatwa as a religious death warrant.

Modern fatwas have been marked by an increased reliance on the process of ijtihad, i.e. deriving legal rulings based on an independent analysis rather than conformity with the opinions of earlier legal authorities (taqlid), and they have sometimes been issued by individuals who do not possess the qualifications traditionally required of a mufti. The most notorious result of disregarding classical jurisprudence are the fatwas of militant extremists. When Osama Bin Laden and his associates issued a fatwa in 1998 proclaiming "jihad against Jews and Crusaders", many Islamic jurists, in addition to denouncing its content, stressed that bin Laden was not qualified to issue a fatwa. New forms of ijtihad have also given rise to fatwas that support such notions as gender equality and banking interest.

In the internet age, a large number of websites provide fatwas in response to queries from around the world, in addition to radio shows and satellite television programs offering call-in fatwas. Erroneous and sometimes bizarre fatwas issued by unqualified or eccentric individuals in recent times have sometimes given rise to complaints about a "chaos" in the modern practice of issuing fatwas. There exists no international Islamic authority to settle differences in interpretation of Islamic law. An International Islamic Fiqh Academy was created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, but its legal opinions are not binding. The vast amount of fatwas produced in the modern world attests to the importance of Islamic authenticity to many Muslims. However, there is little research available to indicate to what extent Muslims acknowledge the authority of various fatwas and heed their rulings in real life.

References

Sources

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