Dueling Fatwas

(Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) A flurry of disagreement has surfaced between hardline Muslim clerics and liberal scholars regarding fatwas or Islamic religious edicts and who can issue fatwas.

Recent incidents have riled the religious community and prompted the Saudi grand mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, to issue a warning.

“Those who offer abnormal fatwas which have no support from the Quran 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.

Conservative religious leaders are upset by a fatwa by Riyadh cleric Adel al-Kalbani which endorses public music performance even though it has been banned in Saudi Arabia. And the hardliners were really angered by a fatwa from senior cleric Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al-Obeikan which specified that a grown man could be considered the son of a woman if she breast-feeds him.

The issue, based on an ancient story from Islamic texts and source of a furore last year in Egypt, is seen by some as a way of getting around the Saudi religious ban on mixing by unrelated men and women.

It brought ridicule and condemnation from women activists and Saudi critics around the world.

The Saudi government is attempting to put some controls on the issuance of fatwas by naming the Council of High Ulema as the overseer. Unfortunately, clerics, scholars and judges must voluntarily submit to the council's authority which doesn't appear likely.

In any event, there is an ongoing struggle by progressive Islamic leaders to loosen up the severe ultra-conservative restrictions imposed on Muslims in Saudi Arabia. The fatwa fight has been described as "chaos."

Companion post at The Jawa Report.