Book Review

Fatwas have become notorious in the West due to the Salman Rushdie case, but, as Islamic Legal Interpretation convincingly argues, they have served as valuable guides for Muslims. Adjuncts to the legal system, fatwas provided interpretations, based on textual sources, logic, and Islamic beliefs, for Muslims faced with both trivial and weighty matters. They comprised only one stream of the shari'a or Islamic law, which naturally included the Quran and the hadith (or traditions associated with the Prophet Muhammad), as well as fiqh or substantive law. Bereft of the direct intercession of the Prophet after his death, the Muslim community required such guidance and laws to cope with new questions.	1
The fiqh provided binding authority in specific cases, but the fatwas offered the considered opinions of pious and knowledgeable scholars. The qadis, or judges, who produced enforceable judgements in litigation or other disputes, were bureaucrats while the muftis, who issued fatwas, were private citizens whose decisions were not binding. However, the muftis were characterized by "more stringent moral requirements and higher standards" (18) than the qadis. The muftis' role was to consider and to define legal principles while the qadis probed the evidence to supply judgments in particular proceedings.	2
As the essays in the book under review show, muftis were consulted by a variety of individuals on an astonishing array of issues. Ordinary citizens, litigants, or even qadis themselves sought fatwas to clarify legal pronouncements found in Islamic texts. The issues on which the muftis offered opinions were similarly diverse, and the fatwas were decidedly opinions. Because they were not binding, other muftis could challenge their validity. Yet as views that had potentially wider significance and applicability, they were more often preserved than the qadis' judgments on specific cases. "Collected in book form and cited across space and time" (19), they did not focus on factual determinations as the more narrowly tailored decisions of the qadis did.	3
The editors of this volume assigned each collaborator the task of describing and elaborating on a specific fatwa issued in traditional or modern times. Readers will, I believe, find this emphasis on the particular captivating. Muftis considered what would appear, in Western eyes, to be the minor ritual question of the appropriate dress for non-Muslim women in mourning, but they also offered pronouncements on such seemingly more sensitive issues as the permissibility of child marriage before the onset of sexual maturity.	4
In more modern times, fatwas have, on occasion, had political repercussions. In 1981, the Council of the Indonesian ulama (or scholars) announced that Muslims must not attend Christmas celebrations, thus exacerbating the already tense relations between the Islamic and Christian communities. Embarrassed by this decision at a time when it sought to convey an image of religious toleration, the Indonesian government exerted considerable pressure on the Council to rescind the fatwa. Political issues were even more pronounced in the responses to Operation Desert Storm. In what Yvonne Haddad refers to as a "fatwa free-for-all," muftis diverged in their counsels concerning the permissibility of a Muslim community supporting non-Muslims in a war against co-religionists. Political alignments and affiliations appeared to predominate over religious law in the determinations leading to fatwas. Yet fatwas on such traditional and nonpolitical issues as divorce and banking or usury have continued to be offered and are described clearly and trenchantly in the book.	5
In short, the editors' strategy of focusing on specific fatwas successfully reveals the basic features of the institution in various eras and in diverse cultures. The writers of individual chapters describe the similarities and differences in fatwas issued in such different cultures as medieval Spain or modern Egypt. Legal historians as well as specialists on Islam will receive a fine introduction to fatwas, a view not limited to the Rushdie case.	6
Morris Rossabi City University of New York

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