ChuckBerry
Joined: 01 Aug 2007
Posts: 2257
Location: Lafayette, LA
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| Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:56 am Post subject: India's Cash-for-Fatwa Scandal |
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Muslims in the country are outraged by revelations, uncovered by a TV sting, that clerics take money for their religious rulings
The "cash-for-fatwas" scandal has...led to a renewed debate on what constitutes a fatwa, and who has legitimate authority to issue one. Fatwas — like the one passed by Iran's Ayatullah Khomeini in 1989 against the novelist Salman Rushdie, or those issued by Osama bin Laden in 1996 and 1998 against America — have come to epitomize the intolerance of Islamic fundamentalists. Yet many Muslims argue that the purpose of fatwas has been misunderstood: A fatwa is, technically speaking, a ruling on a point of Islamic law made by a recognized Muslim scholar in response to a question put to him. Since Osama bin Laden is no Islamic scholar, many deny his right to issue a fatwa. The sway that fatwas hold over Muslims is also not as great as many outsiders think. Last year, a Muslim cleric issued a fatwa stating that it was un-Islamic for Sania Mirza, India's most famous tennis player and a Muslim, to wear sleeveless tops or short skirts on court. Mirza simply dismissed the ruling; indeed, many, if not most, urban Indian Muslims do not take fatwas seriously. However, in rural communities, a well-respected mufti's fatwa — on issues ranging from marriage to health to women's rights — can carry considerable influence. India's Muslim leaders announced that they will soon create a new body that will monitor the passing of fatwas in the country, in a bid to preserve that influence, and nip the popular anger swirling around this scandal.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1537516,00.html
This scandal brings up an interesting point about the de-centralized nature of the Islamic religion. In Catholicism there is a very well established hierarchy, and much study and scholarship must be undertaken by theologians of the Church (sometimes over hundreds of years) before a definitive decision can be made on a point of scripture or a ruling on the spiritual truth of a particular practice or edict. There is a long chain of scholarship reaching back to the earliest Church founders that Catholic theologians draw on to examine spiritual matters, but their final pronouncements must be carefully sifted through by Church fathers before it can become canon law.
Why was such a system not devised for Islam, to more solidly codify what the Koran, Hadith and Sharia say and to stave off rival interpretations? |
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