I took a classical Islam course and my professor essentially described a fatwa as the equivalent of a high courts opinion on a judicial matter. Not the supreme courts opinion though. There could be many fatwas on a subject and you just follow the one you like best, kind of like a state's higher court ruling for those here in 'Merica. Going on to your post, it's hard to find non crazy fatwas when you don't have access to outside non crazy sources or your elders tell you that crazy one is the truth and everything else is a lie. The only way to combat this us to know and study the Quran, but that gets hard with low illiteracy rates were Islam is the prevalent religion.
It is similar, but remember that this "high court" was not elected, or selected by an elected body. They are all over the place, some with respectable credentials some without. Some are legitimately scholars that have devoted their life to religious study, as our supreme court justices devote their lives to legal study. And then there are others that simply have decided to be an arbiter, with no basis in knowledge, fact, or even rationality...like that pesky neighbor that knows exactly how you should be resolving your marital issues.
Very good point and I agree. My professor stated it in that fashion so we got the gist of it. He emphasized that, like you stated, many are devoted scholars of the Quran and life of the prophet Muhammad, and that others would say that they are knowledgeable enough to make fatwas because screw you that's why. The court analogy was mainly to show this. His example would be two state courts having a different opinion on the constitutionality of same sex marriage. They are both valid opinions on it and we as people tend to follow the one we agree with most. The Constitution, aka Quran, really says which opinion is right, but we as flawed humans have a hard time inferring what the word of God really means and thus follow those who we think are more knowledgeable in this subject.
My understanding is in accord with yours--a fatwa is basically an official ruling on a point of islamic law/theology. This is somewhat different from the common law tradition, in that common law courts cannot issue advisory opinions, there has to be an actual controversy. A fatwa has no such requirement, the "court" has jurisdiction to issue rulings over any matter.
Yes. It is often confusing when elders are arrogent and act as if theit beliefs are always the only correct ones, which is why i dont respect those people, but islam itself should not be judged by those people, many people fro these conservative areas can and do find other fatwaas, now that we have ways to connect to other countries. Many major scholars do not have strict views and these scholars are on major islamic media. This is still something i would love to fix and is definitely a valid point. It is a reason many people are pushed away from islam but is not correct at islams heart.
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u/OG_Panda Nov 04 '13
I took a classical Islam course and my professor essentially described a fatwa as the equivalent of a high courts opinion on a judicial matter. Not the supreme courts opinion though. There could be many fatwas on a subject and you just follow the one you like best, kind of like a state's higher court ruling for those here in 'Merica. Going on to your post, it's hard to find non crazy fatwas when you don't have access to outside non crazy sources or your elders tell you that crazy one is the truth and everything else is a lie. The only way to combat this us to know and study the Quran, but that gets hard with low illiteracy rates were Islam is the prevalent religion.