Fatwa Kerfuffle

[ootii]

This is Adel al-Kalbani. A Riyadh based mosque imam and well known qari.



Shaykh Adel has been in the news lately for declaring an opinion about music and singing that contradicts the local orthodoxy. The following article appeared on the front page of the print edition of Arab News today, 1 July, 2010. Oddly, it is not on the website, although much more minor news is there. I expect that they are worried about stirring up more "controversy". Unfortunately for me, this means I'll have to transcribe it myself:

Fatwa fight under focus

Agence France Presse

Riyadh: One scholar's endorsement of breast-feeding and another's saying music is not un-Islamic have opened up a pitched battle in the Kingdom over who can issue fatwas or religious edicts. Religious scholars, judges and Imams have been publicly voicing opinions which some say are creating confusion.

Much of the fight in the past week has focused on a fatwa endorsing music issued by Adil Al-Kalbani, a Riyadh scholar and former imam at the Grand Mosque in Makkah.

Al-Kalbani, popular for his soulful baritone delivery of Qur'anic readings, said the found nothing in Islamic scripture that makes music haram, or forbidden. "There is no clear text or ruling in Islam that states singing and music are haram," Al-Kalbani said.

Also in recent weeks, a much mor senior scholar, Sheikh Abdul Muhsin Al-Obaikan, raised hackles with two of his opinions, both of which could be considered fatwas. First, he endorsed the idea that a grown man could be considered as a son of a woman if she had breast-fed him in his infancy.

The issue, a source of a furor last year in Egypt, is seen by some as a way of getting around the ban on mixing by unrelated men and women. Al-Obeikan also angered conservatives when he said that compulsory Dhuhr and Asr prayer sessions could be combined to help worshipers avoid the intense heat of summer. While the choice is allowed for individuals in certain circumstances, many scholars say such a broad ruling for everyone is wrong.

The comments by Al-Obeikan and Al-Kalbani brought rebukes from top-level scholars seeking to get control of a debate that has erupted into freewheeling public discussions in the media and on the Internet.

In his Friday sermon at Makkah's Grand Mosque, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais lashed out at what he labeled "fraudulent" fatwas, likening their originators to market vendors selling fake or spoiled goods. The effect, he said, goes so far as to undermine the country's security.

Meanwhile, the country's grand mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Asheikh, warned of a crackdown.

"Those who offer abnormal fatwas which have not support from the Quran and Sunnah should be halted," he said on Al-Majd television on Sunday. "If a person comes out (with fatwas) and he is not qualified, we will stop him," he said, comparing such a person to a quack doctor allowed to treat patients.

The government want only one body, the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, to issue fatwas, which other scholars must accept. Some people want fatwas more attuned to modern life. "The people are governed by old ideas," historian and columnist Muhammad Al-Zulfa said. "People are forming a new mantality. (Many) have been waiting for such fatwa for a long time," he said about Al-Kalbani. "We are part of the world. We have to develop the legal system to meet the needs of the modern time," he added.

Hamad Al-Qadi, a member of the Shoura Council, called the fatwa fight this week, "chaos". "The Islamic world follows whatever comes out of our country and its scholars concerning Islam," he said. For his part, Al-Kalbani said he was open to discussion on the issue. "The problem is that there are some who do not accept debate at all," he said. Hew clarified that he was not endorsing all music, using two often risque Lebanese pop singers as examples.

"I am talking about decent singing, which contains decent words, and supports morality," he told the online newspaper Sabq.org. "I am definitely not talking about the songs of Nancy Ajram or Haifa Wehbe or other indecent songs. However, "if Nancy Ajram sang a song with a positive message, then she would be within my view."

Arab News, XXXV, No. 212, 1 July, 2010 p. 1

[hlatif]

Salaam all,

I am starting to view with skepticism the voices that talk about Fatwa Chaos and some like that. I worry that it will lead to severe limitations to the "Democracy of the scholars" or Democracy of ideas. As for the opinions that were expressed:

1- Music is a known area of difference in opinions between prohibition and toleration, so the scholar did not break any previous consensus.

2- The combining of Dhuhr and Asr is also a well known opinion that came from previous scholars including Tabieen and so on. This is especially so since there were opinions that it is ok to delay Dhuhr in case it was too hot.

3- The infamous breast feeding fatwa. This one is odd but it is based on the hadeeth and I am certain that the scholars of the past had debated it as well.

So, even if some Fatwas sound absurd, I would rather read an absurd Fatwa than suppressing people from voicing their opinion or severely limiting it.


Hussein

[ootii]

Salaam Hussein,

The article is rambling and confused. It gives garbled accounts of several issues and confuses fatwas with the views of individual scholars. It also conflates minority opinion to universal position among Muslims, as you correctly point out.

I posted it because it highlights one of the fundamental problems of what we call political Islam: the freedom of people to hold and defend their own opinions. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded around 1740 and has always had essentially the same political structure. A political state that has survived for 270 years obviously has solid political foundations. So, what's up with this fatwa business?

A couple of years ago, Egyptian scholars started talking about the need to exercise some political control over who was issuing fatwas. Their complaint was similar to that of Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh, that a person who issues a fatwa should be qualified to do so. The problem with this, then and now, is that there are no mutually agreed criteria for accrediting men and women to work as muftis.

We may wonder why this problem is appearing now. Since we do have 1500 years of history behind us, why has this problem not appeared earlier. While there has never been any official priesthood in Islam, people often agreed over who could speak legitimately for religion and who could not. Local authorities arose early and consisted of groups of people who studied our religious sources and who thought about and discussed questions of policy and doctrine. These groups first formed around urban centers, principally: Madinah, Kufa, Basra, and were quickly brought into the orbit of political power to legitimize the personal rule of this or that person, endorsing the correct conduct of public policy according to the view of whatever school of law. These schools eventually evolved into madhdhabs.

A tendency to follow personalities rather than arguments and opinions appeared early - and is probably attributable to human nature. Many of the early scholars, among them Abu Hanifa and other founders of the madhdhabs, denounced those who referred to scholars as evidence. Abu Hanifa is famous for having said, "Do not say that Abu Hanifa said this or that" and demanded that anyone referring to one of his opinions first master both the evidence and the argumentation supporting the opinion.

Nevertheless, knots of followers grew around groups of scholars producing a phenomenon known as "taqlid", or blind following. This was denounced very early as well, notably in the work of Abd al-Bar (d. 474 AH). Muslims continued to denounce taqlid throughout their history. In early modern times the African scholar Saleh al-Omari al-Fulani (d. 1318 AH) settled in Madinah and devoted his entire career to the re-interpretation of the work of Abd al-Bar and the struggle against taqlid. Al-Fulani lived during the early period of the first Wahabi state (1740-1803) but was not involved in that movement.

A century and a half later, in Egypt, the Salafi movement was founded by a group of forward looking scholars. The early Salafis were also highly critical of taqlid and correctly stated that the truth of any position depended on evidence and argumentation and not on who held it.

Shaykh Abdul Aziz Al-Asheikh is correct when he says that only those who are qualified should be able to issue fatwas. He neglects, however, to state what constitutes a qualification. The writer of the article suggests that qualification should reside in membership in the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, a Saudi based organization. Selection for such organizations rests on nomination by a member and approval by the group. It is not politically directed, though the political authority does defer to it.

This level of organization is reasonable, however, it will likely result in a narrowing of opinion within the group. Similarly, the state can legitimately designate such an organization as a consulting body. Nevertheless, neither the state nor any independent organization of scholars may limit the right of any person or any group of people to publicly and independently declare and defend positions on religious questions. Ethically, Muslims should accept the possibility of error and permit divergent opinions. In practice, they are not very good at doing this.

It is not the existence of opinions that gives rise to chaos, rather it is the attempt to suppress those who dissent that causes confusion, anger, and dismay. Groups like the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars can not be expected to recognize the qualifications of their competitors. That is why the state stands apart, as a secular authority, to arbitrate sometimes difficult questions and to seek alternate views.

Old orthodoxies become flabby from lack of challenge. Those who hold entrenched opinions do not know the arguments but only repeat, parrot like, the positions of scholars. They take dissent for disrespect and begin to defend the reputations of human beings. This is taqlid. Not understanding arguments, but only angered by apparent disregard for the reputation of this or that person or group of people, proponents of entrenched orthodoxies can only defend themselves through threat and violence.

The only solution to this problem that I can see is to return to our old methods of education: rather than teach positions and the names of scholars who hold them, we should teach argumentation, logic, and reason. We should allow any opinion to be voiced and demand that it be defended with a particular standard of evidence and argument. By shifting or focus away from the person advancing the argument, and onto the argument itself, we avoid all discussion who is qualified to have and opinion and who is not. This demand itself falls to ruin in the light of the Sunnah.

Salaam,

Omar

[Baal Citun]

I just want to say thanks for this thread.