Aug 19, 2010

Saudi Arabia Putting a Cap on Fatwas

Qusay Saudi 7 Comments

I have to confess, I am not much of a follower of fatwas, but more a follower of P.H.A.T.W.A However, I am happy that King Abdullah stopped the fatwas from coming out… now this as everything is a double edged sword.

One of the problems I hope this decree solves is the clarification that not every word that comes out of a religious person’s mouth is a fatwa, like the so called Mickey mouse fatwa which was not a fatwa at all, or any similar ones, which are too abundant to even start mentioning. People in Saudi are guilty of hanging on to these words, as is the media that is willing to contort and run with any story.

Another problem I hope this solves is that now, the frequency we hear “Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa” saying this or that (ex. breastfeeding the driver or coworker) will now be zero, as this is now a government organized thing, and anyone who has tried to get a little paper signed at any government office anywhere around the world knows that bureaucracy is a staple of government, and so… any fatwa will take a loooooong time to be issued

I can imagine them now, going to the fatwa issuing office on the third floor, taking a number and sitting down, then when their number comes, they talk to a very uninterested employee who tell him he has to fill out form A, and get signatures from two references and put them all in a green folder, and not to forget to attach a passport size photo on top of form A without his glasses on, and include two photocopies of his national ID and university degree with the transcript all of course should be official copies of the original documents notarized by a registered notary public, and of course he should comeback in two weeks and when he does comeback, they tell him that his papers are still with the head of the department, please come back in another two weeks. (this paragraph is just my imagination running wild, do not take it seriously)

Now why did we not hear of all these fatwas a long time ago? well, now everyone has relatively more freedom to say what they want, including but not limited to people in the religious establishment, and since Saudi has no political parties and no celebrities (except a few soccer players and a few singers, yet it is not enough for a tabloid industry) to keep people debating or talking about this and that, the clerics have the limelight, and some know how to use it better than others.

I do not see this as a form of limiting the freedom of speech of those individuals, it is, in my opinion at least, a form of the government protecting it self from being associated with crazy fatwas that seem to be coming up more often these days then ever before.

Islam, since its early days had so many schools of thought and little branches… those debates will continue until the end of time, and people’s propensity to come up with strange laws in every culture is another never ending story

*Photo was designed by Ashraf AlFagih