For today’s Muslims, websites constitute a form of religious authority. The content of the questions they ask these portals demonstrates that what is driving them is a normative vision of religion
Last update: 2022-04-22 09:58:43
For today’s Muslims, websites constitute a form of religious authority. Indeed, it is to these that they turn for informed opinions regarding their lives as believers. The content of the questions they ask these portals clearly demonstrates that what is driving them is a normative vision of religion and a constant fear of breaking “the rules.” It also indicates, however, that the things that really concern Muslims are not the issues in which the media are normally interested.
Most studies on Islam remain hostages to debate structured around dichotomies such as Islam and democracy, Islam and modernity, Islam and secularism, Islam and pluralism, Islam and women and so on. The underlying question in this debate is why has Islam not evolved in the same way as Christianity? Why has it not freed itself of its primitive nature, which manifests in the exaltation of violence, non-acceptance of the other, rejection of freedoms and debasement of reason’s role?
The studies referred to concentrate on the religious, political and cultural elite and do not take the ordinary Muslim’s human dimension into consideration. If this approach might once have been necessary in the context of Islamic societies, in that of contemporary Western societies it constitutes a cognitive ideology that is incapable of analysing and understanding the presence—for the first time in history—of millions of Muslims at the centre of European culture.
Nowadays, ordinary Muslims constitute the first “space” in which efforts are being made to harmonize Islam with the West. Formerly lacking visibility, these ordinary Muslims are now within the reach of scientific research thanks to the aid of technology since this stores and disseminates the questions they are asking about the relationship between their faith and the reality in which they are living. Formulated in what is technically called fatwa (fatwā), these questions and their answers are nowadays available on many websites that, for these Muslims, are taking on the function of religious authorities in Europe.
The increasingly important role attributed to these sites by Muslims in the West allows one to leave the realm of the abstract, the theological, the political and the ideological to one side and understand the nature of the Islamic presence on the Old Continent by asking new questions.
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The Law as an Answer
Together with other words deriving from the same root, the word fatwa falls into the semantic area covering terms such as novelty, elucidation,[1] youth, perfection, recourse to adjudication, explanation, freshness and vitality.[2] It is also linked to aftā-hu fī al-amr, “to advise someone on an issue” (i.e. “to set it out for them and explain it to them”) and to istaftā i.e. “to request an explanation and an elucidation.” So a fatwa is the result of two actions, one being the consequence of the other: istiftā’ or act of asking, which is followed by iftā’ or answer and explanation. The person who asks the question is the mustaftī. It is the muftī, on the other hand, who provides the answer.
The word fatwa appears eleven times in the Qur’an (in five different suras)[3] and its semantic field extends to include the meanings “to direct,” “to guide” and “to give advice,” as in the verse: “She said, ‘O Council, pronounce to me concerning my affair; I am not used to decide an affair until you bear me witness.’” (Qur’an 27:32).[4]
Definitions of the term fatwa appearing in the books on Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh)—whether those belonging to the tradition or contemporary ones[5]—differ as to length or brevity and in the words used, but none of them depart from the following formulation: “to inform the requester about sharia’s pronouncement regarding his/her problem, either by way of transmission (naql) or by way of personal interpretative effort (ijtihād), without obligation of compliance.”[6]
This definition encompasses all the features of a fatwa and distinguishes it from other terms of Islamic jurisprudence, such as ijtihād, for example. Indeed, “to inform the requester about sharia’s pronouncement” expresses the fatwa’s purpose, which is that of guiding and directing along the religious path. The act of informing occurs “through words and actions and by way of approving.”[7] “Regarding his/her problem,” on the other hand, refers to the close tie existing between a fatwa and the particular reality of the requester, since “to every requester there pertains a reality proper to him/her, intrinsic to his/her personal features that are not part of the reality of other persons, hence the need to contextualise a general pronouncement, through the formulation of a particular pronouncement regarding a specific case. That is known as a realization of the intent (tahqīq al-manāt). A fatwa therefore encompasses the various phases of ijtihād, from abstract understanding to the application to individual realities.”[8] In other words, sharia has been given for everyone—everywhere and always—but it is conjugated according to an individual’s situation through a fatwa. “By way of transmission or personal interpretational effort,” on the other hand, means that a fatwa can be taken from an earlier legal text (and in this case, the muftī is said to be “the legislator’s transmitter”) or it is the result of an interpretative effort (ijtihād) over a question regarding which no earlier pronouncements exist (in which case it is said that the muftī “stands in for the legislator”)[9]. The wording “without acceptance being obligatory” distinguishes the fatwa both from the judgement issued by a judge and from the decree issued by a governing authority. The definition of the term “fatwa” allows one to infer that the latter is based on the interaction between the law and reality and that a failure to understand one of the two necessarily results in a fatwa being vitiated. That has led many scholars of Islamic jurisprudence to state that the muftī is a mujtahid (i.e. he makes use of ijtihād) and that “only a mujtahid can practice the iftā.”[10] This distinguishes the muftī from the muqallid i.e. the person who limits himself to repeating the juridico-doctrinal pronouncements formulated by his predecessors. The former, on the other hand, formulates new judgments regarding reality, so he must be a mujtahid.
Fatwas are as ancient as sharia itself. God has attributed the role of muftī to himself, as stated in verse 4:176 of the Qur’an: “They will ask thee for a pronouncement. Say: ‘God pronounces to you concerning the indirect heirs.’” The Prophet was the first to practice the iftā’.[11] Indeed, fatwas are one of the ways through which God has charged him to explain revelation to humankind: “[…] and we have sent down to thee the Remembrance that thou mayest make clear to mankind what was sent down to them; and so haply they will reflect” (Qur’an 16:44).
This clearly reflects the fatwa’s nature and its role as a mechanism for producing sharia. In confirmation of this, there are the words of many Qur’anic commentators and Islamic jurists (fuqahā’) who describe Qur’anic revelation (which descended a little at a time, over a span of twenty-three years, the duration of Prophet Muhammad’s mission) as an adaptation to contingent events and an answer to believers’ questions.[12] Indeed, some of these commentators have divided the Qur’an into two parts: one that descended on its own initiative and another, which descended after some episode or question.[13] Moreover, from the rhetorical or stylistic point of view, the interrogative form is widely recurring in the Qur’an’s verses and it is both quantitatively and functionally dominant in comparison with other linguistic forms.
Questions in the Qur’an embrace many aspects of the life lived by the first Islamic society: the transcendent reality and the divine mystery, such as the day of resurrection (“They will question thee concerning the Hour,” Qur’an 7:187); financial issues, such as ways of spending money (“They will question thee concerning what they should expend,” 2:215) and war and fighting (“They will question thee concerning the holy month, and fighting in it,” 2:217). The questions touch on social issues, such as the care of orphans (“They will question thee concerning the orphans,” 2:220); intimate relations, such as sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman (“They will question thee concerning the monthly course,” 2:222); pastimes and amusement (“They will question thee concerning wine, and arrow-shuffling,” 2:219) and history (“They will question thee concerning Dhool Karnain,” 18:83). Then there are the questions about the things in nature that can be seen and touched, such as the mountains (“They will question thee concerning the mountains,” 20:105), and those that can be neither seen nor touched, such as the spirit (“They will question thee concerning the Spirit,” 17:85).
The foregoing allows one to infer that the main drive behind a sizeable part of the Qur’an (and of sharia in general) is a questioning and that the motive for this questioning swings between the desire to know, the quest for truth and the attempt to achieve moral and social perfection. Questions are the door through which sharia is produced and reformulated, in conformity with the conditions of an ever-new reality. Perhaps this is the reason why the Prophet’s Companions and Successors were terrified by questions and shrank from iftā’. All books dealing with the fatwa include at least a chapter dedicated to stories of how the Companions, the Successors and the great fuqahā’ detested the role of muftī[14] and pitied themselves on account of the great responsibility they had to assume when issuing fatwas for people in their capacity as legislators working on God’s behalf. Indeed, the muftī “stands in for the Prophet”[15] and is “the Prophet’s successor.”[16] Ibn al-Qayyim went even further, choosing to give his book—a milestone in the literature on fatwas—the title Information for Those who Write on Behalf of the Lord of the Worlds (I‘lām al-muwaqqi‘īn ‘an rabb al-‘ālamīn). So the muftī is the person who formulates a legal judgment applied to reality on God’s behalf. For this reason, the fuqahā’ have established precise prerequisites for carrying out the function of muftī: prerequisites that possibly only prophets are capable of satisfying.[17] The fuqahā’ have not only concerned themselves with those who practise the iftā’, however. They have also fixed the conditions for those requesting a fatwa,[18] describing in detail how all the possible categories of requesters[19] should ask their question and making an effort to bind the fatwa to a true reality, rather than a hypothetical, abstract or imaginary one.[20]
The fatwa has thus undergone various transformations during the first centuries of its existence. It has evolved from a mechanism for producing sharia (proceeding from its two primary sources, the Qur’an and the Sunna) to the main driving force behind a renewed understanding of these sources after the Prophet Muhammad’s death and, finally, into the fundamental guarantee of the connection between law, the individual’s need and the contingent reality in which the latter lives. Perhaps the fatwa’s main distinguishing feature during each of these various phases is freedom: the freedom to ask oneself questions, the freedom to express this asking-oneself-questions in a question and the freedom for those asking the questions to follow or not follow the answers received.[21] If the principle summarized in the phrase istafti qalba-k (“consult your heart”)[22] is taken into consideration, it may be said that the fatwa’s distinguishing feature was originally freedom of conscience and the freedom to develop everything that leads to such freedom and results from it. Perhaps the rigidity that assailed consciences in later centuries has diminished the vastness not only of sharia but also of reality and believers’ collective capacity for discernment (it is not appropriate to go into the details here, however). Ibn al-Jawzī has referred to this fact in a dramatic and sorrowful sentence: “Knowledge lay in the breasts of men—that is to say, in their consciences—then it moved into the bellies of books and was impossible to find except by those who ruminate on it without adding anything new to it with their ijtihād; and the will and the ability to practise ijtihād continued to diminish until we reached the worst of all the descendants; and knowledge died.”[23]
The Islamic societies’ experience of modernity has further complicated the problem of fatwas and iftā’ by creating a new reality. When, in the past, there were none of today’s abundant means of communication, a fatwa was recognizable by its wide-ranging scope. It was up to people to use their own reasoning to establish a connection between a known fatwa and their own personal condition. Nowadays, on the other hand, modern means of communication abound, thereby permitting every individual to obtain a fatwa that is specific to his/her case. As a consequence, it is no longer necessary to think, to reason by analogy or to debate. Modernity has made available a form of technology that has definitively disconnected religiousness from rationality. This is in conflict with what Islam considers one of its most important characteristics, namely, the absence of a clerical authority combined with the principle of consulting “one’s heart.” Given the millions of fatwas formulated every year, it seems that Muslims have completely renounced their responsibility to reflect on how to marry their own daily lives with their religious creed, which is all to the advantage of the religious figures who have taken it upon themselves to think for society as a whole. They present themselves as the intermediaries between the ancient fathers and the children living in today’s society.[24]
The Jurisprudence of Minorities
This situation has also begun to be reflected in European societies since the moment when millions of Muslim immigrants settled in Western Europe after the Second World War. These Muslims have been a challenge to European societies and the values on which they were based (e.g. pluralism and human rights). They have also been a challenge for Islamic jurisprudence, however, since the latter has been forced to offer new solutions in order to harmonize with these societies.
Thus, during the second half of the 1990s, there emerged a new type of Islamic jurisprudence: one that contemporary jurists have unanimously called fiqh al-aqalliyyāt (jurisprudence of minorities).[25] These jurists are also agreed about its subject, that is to say “the juridico-religious pronouncements regarding Muslims living outside Islamic countries.”[26]
As regards the relationship between this new jurisprudence and the traditional one, the jurist ‘Abd Allāh Bin Bayyah has stated that
The Muslim minority’s situation in non-Muslim lands can be described as a situation of necessity (darūra), in the general sense of the term. For this reason, there was a need for a specific jurisprudence; something that nevertheless does not imply the creation of a new fiqh outside the Islamic fiqh and its authoritative points of reference: the Book, the Sunna and the proofs (adilla) deriving from them, such as ijmā‘ (unanimous agreement), qiyās (reasoning by analogy), istihsān (practical utility), al-masālih al-mursala (common interest), sadd al-dharā’i‘ (prohibition of what can lead to sin), ‘urf (customary practice) and istishāb (presumption of a prior situation’s continuation), right up to the last of the proofs in which the imams have trusted when issuing those numerous and variegated pronouncements and opinions that constitute the wealth and vastness of the fiqh. The minorities’ problems are of an old kind but a modern type.[27]
Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī, the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideologue of reference as well as former president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, has come to the same conclusion. For him, the fiqh of minorities must not lie outside the scope of the general fiqh, since it is “a particular fiqh within the general fiqh.”[28] Perhaps this is the prevailing principle of this “new” fiqh, given that the dozens of publications bearing the title Fiqh al-aqalliyyāt all follow it.
The aim of this jurisprudence is to protect Muslim minorities from disintegrating into the culture of their host societies and to “spread the call to Islam amongst the majorities, with the consequential gradual consolidation of Islam in the world.”[29]
In general, the language used in these books is inspired by a vision of life in the Western societies as a necessity or inevitable evil. Even in the texts of moderate jurists like ‘Abd Allāh Bin Bayyah, one can find expressions such as “inevitability of the calamity,” “rejection of immorality,” “the minor harm or the lesser evil” and “dār al-kufr,” “the land of unbelief.”[30] In the extremists’ books, on the other hand, the West is only spoken of as the dār al-harb, the land of war, and the Muslims who live there are invited to apply the rule of “loyalty and disavowal” (al-walā’ wa’l-barā’) and abandon the West in order to emigrate towards the dār al-islām, Islam’s land.
It is impossible not to ask oneself what would happen if these jurists (and those who finance their activities)[31] were to see the Muslim minorities as a human bridge capable of playing an essential role in eliminating the historic incomprehension and negative stereotypes dominating public opinion in both cultures.
In any case, there can be no scientific answer to this question because science always starts from reality and bases its findings solely on the facts. Therefore, in order to escape the closed circle of jurisprudence and abstract questions whilst remaining faithful to a scientific approach, I have preferred to shift my attention onto the concrete questions being asked by Muslims in Europe and the material and spiritual problems that afflict them and drive them to seek an informed opinion. Nowadays, this task is made easier by technology. In the era of internet and the social media, there are many ways of requesting a fatwa or consulting ready-made fatwas: websites, e-mail, telephone, Whatsapp numbers, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, YouTube channels and, last but not least, apps for smartphones and tablets. Virtual reality therefore constitutes an extraordinary, immense and easily consultable archive of the questions that Muslims are asking themselves about the relationship between their faith and the reality that they are living. So, in order to study these questions, it was first of all necessary to construct a representative sample. That was done following the procedure described in the following section.
Islamic “Authorities” on the Web
This study was limited to an analysis of the fatwas collected together on websites. It ignored the other channels available nowadays for requesting juridico-religious opinions (e.g. social media). The first reason for this is that it is normally the websites that manage accounts linked to the various social media. The second reason is a practical one: it is only on the websites that one can find complete fatwa archives ordered according to topic and date that also provide search tools based on subject and keyword.
In order to identify the most popular Islamic sites in Europe, reference was made to Alexa’s[32] data on Internet traffic, updated to 8 January 2017. From the list supplied by Alexa, of the 500 Islamic sites with the most visitors in the world, only those offering an online fatwa service were selected. So as to prevent this selection process excluding websites that did not fall within the 500 most visited in the world but that could nevertheless be amongst the most popular in Europe, we included another twenty-two sites indicated by Alexa as being similar in content to those already selected. Of these, we eventually considered a total of fifteen sites. To these we added two sites that enjoy a particular authority in the Islamic world (the Egyptian Dār al-Iftā’[33] and its Saudi equivalent[34]) and the site run by the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR),[35] because of its importance for our research (it being the first and only institutional body created explicitly to respond to the needs and questions of Muslims residing in Europe).
The next step was to analyse the geographical provenance of the people frequenting these eighteen sites, whilst excluding those with a percentage of visitors from Europe that was below 0.5%. Four sites were eliminated, including the Egyptian Dār al-Iftā’. No data was available on Alexa for the ECFR but the latter was kept in the sample on account of its importance for the study’s purposes. The remaining thirteen sites had an audience of above 0.5% from Great Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Norway. These thirteen sites were then ranked according to their popularity in each of the three countries providing the greatest audience from Europe, i.e. Great Britain, France and Germany. The result: the sites occupying the first five places in all three countries were: islamQA,[36] islamweb,[37] islamway,[38] Alukah[39] and the site run by the imam Ibn Bāz.[40] However, islamway obtains many of its fatwas from islamQA and other sites and so it was discarded. Alukah offers a Question-and-Answer service and a counselling one, but not a genuine online fatwa service and it was therefore discarded in its turn. Ibn Bāz’s site was also excluded, since it does not offer the possibility of carrying out a search by subject or keyword.
In short, the sites taken into consideration in this study were: islamQA, islamweb and the ECFR.
IslamQA is a private site, founded and supervised by the Saudi Muslim scholar of Syrian origin, Muhammad Sālih al-Munājid, a member of the Salafi current. Active since 1997, the site was one of the first to provide an online fatwa service. It has been censored in Saudi Arabia because it was seen to be competing with the Council of Ulama, the country’s only authority authorized to promulgate fatwas.
The site operates in sixteen languages and hosts a vast number of fatwas: in the order of hundreds of thousands. A whole section is explicitly dedicated to the Muslim minorities (it has more than 1,271 fatwas, producing five a month, on average). The fatwas issued by islamQA are often republished by other sites.
The data show that 10.3% of the site’s visitors come from European countries: Great Britain (3.4%), France (3.4%), Germany (1.8%), the Netherlands (0.6%), Belgium (0.6%) and Sweden (0.5%). According to Alexa, the vast majority of the visitors are male and most of them have a university level of education.
Islamweb is a governmental Islamic network, run by a department of Qatar’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. The site says in its mission statement that it adopts a balanced and moderate position and that it is addressing Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in order to enrich both groups’ knowledge of Islam. The site operates in five languages (Arabic, English, French, Spanish and German) and has been active since 1998. It hosts a total of 170,916 fatwas (i.e. 24 fatwas a day, on average). The data show that 5.5% of its visitors come from Europe: France (2%), Germany (1.5%), Great Britain (1.4%) and Sweden (0.6%). The majority are male, with a university level of education.
According to a rating provided by the site itself, the most popular fatwas have, on average, clocked up thousands of visits, hundreds of thousands of readings and hundreds of prints and shares on Facebook. There are fatwas that have been read more than a million times and have had more than a thousand shares.
Established in London in 1997 on the initiative of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe, the European Council for Fatwa and Research is run by a foundation based in Dublin. The Council promulgates collective fatwas on the occasion of its periodic meetings (once a year, on average). According to statute, the ECFR aims to unify the opinions of the ulama residing on European soil regarding important questions of Islamic jurisprudence and, above all, topics that are important for the Muslims living within European societies. The ECFR is also seeking official recognition by the European institutions and is therefore proposing itself as the main representative of Islamic communities in Europe. The site operates in Arabic and has not produced very many fatwas in comparison with the previously mentioned sites: only 154 in twenty years. Furthermore, Alexa provides no information on the number of its visitors. According to the figures the site itself provides, every fatwa is viewed between 600 and 1,000 times, on average.
Muslims’ Questions
In order to analyse what questions Muslims residing in Europe ask both themselves and scholars of Islamic jurisprudence, it was necessary to construct a representative sample. All the fatwas promulgated by the ECFR were included in the sample, since they had certainly been spurred by questions coming from European Muslims. Of the fatwas held in the islamQA site’s archives, on the other hand, we selected those gathered together in the section dedicated to the Muslim minorities, dating from 1997 to the present day and containing either clear indications in the question that the requesting person resided in Europe or a Western country or clear references to Muslim life in European countries. Islamweb does not have a section dedicated to Muslim minorities, so we selected all the fatwas from 1997 to 2017 answering questions containing the keywords “Europe,” “the West” and derivatives. In fact, some fatwas were responding to more than one question. In these cases, we counted each question separately in the sample.
The selection process described above furnished us with 999 questions, asked in Arabic, English and French. Each question was inserted into one of ten general categories, according to the topic involved: (1) the public space, (2) work and finance, (3) foods and medicines, (4) social relations, (5) relationships with non-Muslims, (6) the relationship with the state, (7) ‘ibādāt, (8) Islam and technology, (9) community organization and religious training, (10) various everyday activities, (11) clothing and make-up and (12) animals and other objects.
The “public space” category included questions concerning schools and universities, roads and transport, hospitals, prisons, public holidays, feast-days and national symbols (such as flags) and the impossibility of practising one’s faith in the workplace or because of work.
The “work and finance” category included the vast collection of questions on the lawfulness of the professions practised by Muslims in Europe and an equally vast group of questions regarding the lawfulness of bank loans, insurance, the buying and selling of shares, investments and pension funds.
The “foods and medicines” category included all the questions on food, drinks and harām medicines (i.e. the ones that contain pork, alcohol or other forbidden substances).
The “social relations” category covered the questions on marriage and conjugal relations, divorce and child custody, sexuality, motherhood and fatherhood, parent-child relations, friendships, mourning and inheritance, adoption and abortion, and the da‘wā (call to Islam) addressed to Muslims.
The “relations with non-Muslims” category included questions about mixed marriages, relations with non-Muslim family members, friendships and working relationships with non-Muslims, interreligious dialogue, solidarity and sharing with non-Muslims, da‘wā directed at non-Muslims, hijra (migration from non-Muslim countries to Muslim countries) and jihād against non-Muslims.
The “relationship with the state” category covered questions about the possibility of getting round the civil law of the host country or the need to comply with it, marriages of convenience in order to obtain stay permits, fake divorces in order to qualify for financial concessions, the possibility of doing or avoiding military service and of acquiring the nationality of the host country.
The “‘ibādāt” category covered questions about the five pillars of Islam (professions of faith, prayer, ritual almsgiving, fasting and pilgrimage), purification from the minor and major impurities, the way of ritually sacrificing animals and Friday preaching (khutba).
The “Islam and technology” category included questions involving the innovations brought by modernity: internet and the social networks, mobile phones, modern means of transport (aeroplanes, cars etc.), photographs and medical procedures for preventing or fostering pregnancy.
The “community organization and religious training” category included questions about the imam’s role and morality, the managing of community money and the practical organization of worship, the administration of mosques and Islamic centres, conflict within the community and all the questions about the Qur’an, the hadīth and Islamic history.
The “various everyday activities” category included questions about children’s games, the choice of names for children and converts, music and all the activities not falling within the other categories.
The “clothing and make-up” category included questions about the veil and other items of clothing, beards, jewels and cosmetics.
The “animals and other objects” category, on the other hand, included questions about the impurity of dogs and other animals, as well as various products such as soap and toothpaste.
Lastly, in order to assess the extent to which the Western societies’ widespread stereotype of Muslims is actually rooted in reality, the questions involving topics of media interest were also flagged: (a) the subjugation of women (male guardianship of women and the need or not for a woman to ask her husband’s permission before carrying out certain activities), (b) separation of the sexes (forms of interaction, or non-interaction, between men and women), (c) veils and beards, (d) virginity, (e) co-existence/separation of Muslims and non-Muslims (questions about the possibility of entering into friendships with non-Muslims and the need or not to break off relations with non-Muslim family members), (f) radicalization and extremist conduct, (g) mosque-building, (h) pork and alcohol, (i) the imam’s role, (l) apostasy, (m) the role of women in the Islamic community (questions about the presence of women in the mosque and a female imamate), (n) the imposition of sharia (o) Christian symbols and places (the possibility of praying in the presence of bibles and crucifixes, entering churches, celebrating Christmas, wearing uniforms with Christian symbols on them etc.), (p) polygamy and (q) conflict between Shiites and Sunnis.
Real Concerns and Media Stereotypes
The preliminary results stemming from an analysis of the question sample constructed as described above allow many interesting observations to be made.[41] They are presented in the bar chart above. The most important is the fact that what concerns Muslims living in Europe (i.e. what attracts their attention and shapes their hopes) are aspects that are very far from the spotlight arena created by academic research and the information machine, always intent on pushing Muslims to take sides regarding issues that, in reality, do not interest the overwhelming majority of them at all. Theological problems, Qur’anic interpretations, conflict between different schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the presence of religious symbols in the public space and mosque-building all arouse only marginal interest, as can be seen from the questions asked by devout Muslims in Europe. Indeed, it should be borne in mind that the Muslims who request a fatwa are amongst those who are most practising and desirous of finding a harmony between the religious traditions and their own existence within European society, whereas another vast group of Muslims in Europe do not feel any contradiction between Islam and their lives in the West and still another group does not feel the need to ask for a fatwa from outside the religious group to which they belong, whether this be Salafi or one of the various currents of political Islam. This latter category is small in number and has little influence, as demonstrated by the figures for members of the associations falling within it. Perhaps the best example is the European Council for Fatwa and Research: the names of its founders and members reveal a clear affiliation to the Muslim Brotherhood. The number of fatwas promulgated by this Council and the number of visitors its website receives are both small when compared to the other Islamic sites.
The aforesaid leads us to another important observation i.e. that the Muslims living in the West tend to separate religion from the state. Whether run by governments or opposition groups, the sites with a clear political orientation receive a very low number of visitors when compared to the Salafi sites: the latter have the highest percentage of visits, despite the fact that they are usually religiously conservative and sometimes even extremist, fanatical and narrow-minded (the founder of islamQA issued a famous fatwa against Micky Mouse and yet this site is one of the most frequented and influential). Nevertheless, one should not overlook the fact that the lack of faith in politics and the abstention from taking part in it constitute two of the most important elements of the deformed and deforming blend of Islamic social and religious traditions that these immigrants have brought with them: they are the result of a forced modernization that has been stripped of modernity’s meaning and values. This can be seen in many of the questions about the possibility of deceiving the state in order to obtain privileges: in the Southern Mediterranean, the experience of the modern state has created a great gulf between said state and its citizens, who see it as an instrument of oppression and tyranny.
Perhaps the most significant fact to be highlighted by these preliminary results, however, is that the real concern of Muslims in Western society is how to relate to others, Muslims and non-Muslims alike. At least 45% of the questions analysed involve this issue of relating. The questions are all personal ones concerning individuals and only rarely are they linked to public Muslim issues. If one adds the questions regarding worship (‘ibādāt)—that is to say, regarding the personal relationship with God—the percentage rises to 63%. This leads to a conclusion that may perhaps be disconcerting for some: the fact that what emerges from the Muslims’ questions about whether or not activities in their everyday life are lawful is, above all, a concern about how to live harmoniously in this society as individuals and persons, rather than as a community or a religious minority. The most committed segment of Muslims in Europe therefore aspires to blend in with society, rather than oppose it through affiliations and self-containment within the confines of their own religious community.
These results can perhaps help to explain the enormous difficulties that have surfaced in Europe in connection with the various models of integration, especially the English one (despite its great openness towards religions and its acceptance of their presence in the public space) and the French one (which excludes religions and criminalizes their presence in the public space). These difficulties have occurred because both models—despite the great difference between them—exclude the person in favour of form. The English model integrates Islam as a religion, but that means integrating a set of symbols and stereotypes to the detriment of both pluralism and the differences between believers. In other words, religion is present in the public space but the person is not. In the French model, on the other hand, integration means that citizens must renounce a large part of what they consider to be the source of their being in order to access the public space. Therefore this model, too, results in an absence of the person in such space. In contrast, in the study presented here, the person emerges forcefully in all its complexity, difference, contradictoriness and individuality: the flesh and blood Muslim who, like any other human being, steers a course through modernity in order to find his/her own psychosocial, spiritual and material balance within the network of relations of which his/her environment and daily existence are composed.
Making the person the central point of interest once again, however, does not only serve to free us of the stereotypes that can cloud our judgment. Even more importantly, it enables us to put our finger on the real crisis that Islamic societies are experiencing, at both the individual and the collective level: a crisis that has been sparked by the mixing of a tradition that has become inflexible with a distorted modernity. The content of the questions analysed clearly indicates that what pushes people to ask them is, first and foremost, a fear of breaking “the rules” and falling into sin. Knowing what is good and what is evil is no longer what truly concerns people. It is no longer important to know this because there are “the rules:” following them exempts one from asking dangerous questions that could lead one away from religion completely. Muslims have begun to see life as a difficult exam: in order to pass, they must be committed to learning the lessons and memorizing the rules, like good, diligent students. Thus, the fear of incurring sin has become a fear of life itself. Every novelty has become bid‘a (heterodoxy), every bid‘a a step towards perdition and every step towards perdition leads to hell.
This study reveals that Muslims in Europe take only an insignificant interest in public issues. Very few questions are asked about party membership or participation in civil society activities. This is natural: how can those who have delegated the responsibility for formulating judgments on the most specific personal questions be able to formulate them for society as a whole? It is essentially the Muslims with political-Islam affiliations who are the ones involved in public activities. They, in their turn, do not formulate any new opinions but simply invite the others to obey the rules i.e. the sharia that, as we have seen, was once a space for creativity and renewal, thanks to fatwas.
Further developments in this research will therefore not be limited to giving the lie to the Muslim stereotypes currently prevailing but will, perhaps, also help Muslims themselves to start seeking meaning, formulating autonomous opinions and, in short, living again.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Oasis International Foundation
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[3] Qur’an 4:127; 4:176; 12:41; 12:43; 12:46; 18:22; 27:32; 37:11 and 37:149 [Muhammad Fu’ād ‘Abd al-Bāqī, Al-mu‘jam al-mufahras li-alfāz al-Qur’ān al-Karīm. al-Qāhira: Dār al-Hadīth, 1988, p. 650].
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[8] Qutb al-Rīsūnī, Sinā‘at al-fatwā, p. 27.
[9] Ibidem.
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[11] Muhammad Jamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī, Al-fatwā fī al-islām, Edited by Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hakīm al-Qādī . Bayrūt: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 1986, p. 33.
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[14] Ibn al-Qayyim, I‘lām al-muwaqqi‘īn ‘an rabb al-‘ālamīn, Edited by Hasan b. Mashhūr. Riyād: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1423/2002, vol. 2, pp. 62–65. See, also: Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī, Adab al-futyā, Edited by Muhy al-Dīn Hilāl. Baghdād: Dār al-irshād, 1986, p. 27.
[15] Abū Ishāq al-Shātibī, Al-muwāfaqāt fī usūl al-sharī‘a, p. 244.
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[18] Ibidem, pp. 47–51.
[19] Ahmad b. Hamdān al-Harānī, Sifat al-fatwā wa al-muftī wa al-mustaftī. Dimashq: Manshūrāt al-maktab al-islāmī, 1380/1960, pp. 68–83.
[20] Ibn al-Jawzī (‘Abd al-Rahmān b. ‘Alī b. Muhammad), Ta‘zīm al-futyā, p. 79. See, also: Ahmad b. Hamdān al-Harānī, Sifat al-fatwā, p. 30.
[21] Ahmad b. Hamdān al-Harānī, Sifat al-fatwā, p. 81.
[22] This principle is taken from a famous saying of the Prophet’s (hadīth): “[I heard] Wābisa al-Asadī say: I came to the Prophet, may God’s peace and blessing be upon him, with the intention not to neglect asking him anything about rectitude and sin. I reached him. He was surrounded by a circle of Muslims who were questioning him. I tried to get past them in order to reach him and they said: ‘Be careful, Wābisa!’ I said to them: ‘Let me approach him, since he is the person whom I most love to approach.’ He said: ‘Let Wābisa pass! Approach, Wābisa, approach!’ I approached and sat down before him. He said to me: ‘O Wābisa! Do you want to ask me or shall I tell you?’ I said: ‘You tell me, o Messenger of God.’ He said: ‘Have you come to ask me about rectitude and sin?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ Then he put his fingers together and began to strike me on the chest with them, saying: ‘O Wābisa! Consult your heart, even if people give you advice! Consult it three times.’”
[23] Ibn al-Jawzī (‘Abd al-Rahmān b. ‘Alī b. Muhammad), Ta‘zīm al-futyā, p. 107.
[24] Wael Farouq, “Reason Between Breastfeeding and Weaning,” Oasis, no. 21 (2015), pp. 64-74.
[25] ‘Abd Allāh b. Bayyah, Sinā‘at al fatwā wa fiqh al-aqalliyyāt. Bayrūt: Dār al-minhāj, 2007, p. 29.
[26] Ibid., p. 31.
[27] Ibid., p. 34.
[28] Yūsuf al-Qaradāwī, Fiqh al-aqalliyyāt al-muslima. Al-Qāhira: Dār al-Shurūq, 2001, p. 34.
[29] ‘Abd Allāh b. Bayyah, Sinā‘at al fatwā wa fiqh al-aqalliyyāt, p. 36.
[30] Ibid., p. 31.
[31] The interest in the Muslim minorities living in the West arose out of the concern to protect them from disintegrating into Western culture and use them as a means of spreading Islam and political influence. This began in the early 1970s, when some countries and certain wealthy figures in the Gulf States began providing handsome financial support for the building of mosques and Islamic cultural centres. This with the aim of spreading the Wahhabi Salafi thought characteristic of Gulf Islam. The role of these financiers clearly emerges from what ‘Alī b. al-Muntasir al-Kattānī recounts in his book Al-muslimūn fī Ūrūbbā wa Amrīkā (Bayrūt: Dār al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya, 2007) and, perhaps, even more so from virtual reality, since these financiers have created the most important websites publishing online fatwa archives.
[33] http://www.dar-alifta.org
[37] http://www.islamweb.net/mainpage/index.php
[41] A more complete analysis of the research’s results can be found in Wael Farouq, Conflicting Arab Identities. Language, Tradition and Modernity. Milan-Baghdad: Almutawassit Books, 2018.
To cite this article
Printed version:
Wael Farouq, “Fatwas: Mirrors of Islamic Religiosity in Europe”, Oasis, year XIV, n. 28, December 2018, pp. 70-86.
Online version:
Wael Farouq, “Fatwas: Mirrors of Islamic Religiosity in Europe”, Oasis [online], published on 27th March 2019, URL: https://www.oasiscenter.eu/en/fatwa-mirror-of-islam-in-europe.