How to tell a good fatwah from a bad one:

polite_gandalf wrote on Jan 27^th, 2015 at 10:07pm:



The weight of Islamic scholarship is greatly important.   Here are some impeccably scholarly examples:

Ezzat Attiya, the president of the hadith department of Cairo'sAl Azhar University: an adult female breastfeeding an adult male coworker will defuse all sexual tension in the office. The female worker will now be the male worker’s foster mother and they can be alone together anytime.


Rashad Hassan Khalil, The former Dean of the Faculty of Sharia (or Islamic law) at the same Al Azhar University (supposedly founded in the 10th century):  "being completely naked during the act of coitus annuls the marriage."

Muhammad Al-Munajid studied Islamic law under the scholars 'Abd al-'Aziz ibn Baaz,[4][3] Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen, Abdullah Ibn Jibreen, Saleh Al-Fawzan, and Abd ar-Rahmaan al-Baraak.[3] He is the imam at the Umar ibn Abd al-'Aziz mosque in the city of Al-Khobar, Saudia Arabia and was the first person to launch a website representing Islam in Saudi Arabia. Munajjid holds the view that mice are "one of Satan's soldiers" and makes everything it touches impure; and that depictions of the creature in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, and Disney's Mickey Mouse, had taught children that it was in fact loveable. According to the IslamQA website (which is supervised by Munajjid) Islam prohibits women from driving. It states that,  "It is well known that (driving) leads to evil consequences which are well known to those who promote it, such as being alone with a non-mahram (marriageable) woman, unveiling, reckless mixing with men, and committing haraam (sinful) actions because of which these things were forbidden.


In 1988 Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa against Rushdie, with a huge bounty for his death.
Ayatollah ("Sign of Allah") is a high-ranking title given to Usuli Twelver Shī‘ah clerics. Those who carry the title are experts in Islamic studies such as jurisprudence, ethics, and philosophy and usually teach in Islamic seminaries.


Grand Mufti Sheikh Ibn Baaz (a salaafi and the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s) whose "immense religious erudition and his reputation for intransigence" gave him such "prestige" among the pious population of Saudi Arabia, that his fatwas endorsing government policy greatly strengthened the Saudi Arabian government, and his death left the government without a comparable figure to "fill" his "shoes.
In his fatwah,  “The Transmitted and Sensory Proofs of the Rotation of the Sun and Stillness of the Earth”, he asserted that the earth was flat and disk-like and that the sun revolved around it. He insisted that satellite images to the contrary were nothing but a Western conspiracy against the Islamic world.
He also issued a fatwa against women driving cars, which may have been his most well known ruling.[23] He declared: "Depravity leads to the innocent and pure women being accused of indecencies. Allah has laid down one of the harshest punishments for such an act to protect society from the spreading of the causes of depravity. Women driving cars, however, is one of the causes that lead to that."





These are impeccable Islamic scholars. They are our contemporaries.  They based their fatwahs on their immense  scholarship focusing on Islam. And yet - they are barking mad.i

issuevoter wrote on Jan 29^th, 2015 at 3:42pm:



Like something out of Greek mythology Gandalf has sentenced himself to forever be cleaning out the Augean stables of the crap laid there by his more, er, 'active' Muslim brethren.

Unfortunately, the news services being as instantaneous as they are nowadays in our digital world, Gandalf's task is a futile one that's doomed to failure because more crap is laid each day than he can possibly manage to shovel out.

It's like that fellow who was doomed to roll a large boulder up the hill for an eternity because it kept rolling back down again.

Trying to sanitise Islam's nasty little manifestations around the world today is nothing but a mission for a fool ... or someone who is deeply embarrassed at having converted to Islam, or been born a Muslim in a more peaceful time.

issuevoter wrote on Jan 29^th, 2015 at 3:42pm:


Really?  Care to provide a quote where he has done so?   

Yadda wrote on Jan 29^th, 2015 at 8:18pm:


What exactly do you find "inexcusable" Yadda, as you have gone on record previously in defence of genocide and slaughtering babies quite specifically when it was done by the Jewish people in the Old Testament?

Brian Ross wrote on Feb 3^rd, 2015 at 11:16pm:


That's a myth, perpetrated by the ignorant to benefit the fascist muslim cause!

Re: The value of Islamic scholarship

Perhaps their love of mosaics is universal amongst all the various schisms, I don't know. Perhaps there is something else that unites Islam in a material sense. Maybe a love of mosques and minarets?

If not, it would require a lifetime of study to understand what it is that currently divides them.

In today's day and age, whatever the sages in the olden Islamic empires discovered, it has become eclipsed by the modern solidarity expressed by all the different factions of Islam against the 'kuffar'.

S'funny that! Islam is an equal opportunity belief/political system - it doesn't matter what colour you are, your nationality, what language you speak, your educational status or your economic standing - you can become a member of the 'religion of peace' - Islam  - a Muslim.

It's a shame that by doing so, they also surrender all the social mores that separate humanity from the behaviour of our animal cousins.

Hence their modern-day behaviour.

Perhaps it's modern Islamic scholarship that is to blame?

Saudi Cleric Reveals The Sun Rotates Around The Earth

A Saudi Arabian cleric has made a groundbreaking discovery that could redefine science in the 21st century –- the Earth does not rotate. What’s more, the sun is orbiting the static body, not the other way around.

The breakthrough was made by Sheikh Bandar al-Khaibari, who delivered his thesis during a recent lecture in the United Arab Emirates, having been asked by a student about the movement of the planet.

Reported by al Arabiya, the Sheikh replied that Earth is “stationary and does not move,” explaining his research by noting that airplanes would not be able to reach their destination were the Earth spinning on its axis.

The newspaper said the Sheikh went on to dismiss the traditional Copernican astronomical model, insisting that any science countering his “stationary” theory, namely NASA’s lunar missions, was fabricated by Hollywood.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/17/saudi-cleric-reveals-the-sun-rotates-...