Syrian activists are rejecting reports that a sexual jihad has taken place within its borders, after a Tunisian official said women were returning home from there pregnant. This rebuttal follows an earlier one from the Saudi cleric Dr Muhammed al-Arifi, who denied saying Syrian fighters should have sex to keep their spirits up.
That the phantom fatwa gained so much traction, persuading not just the media but Muslims of its veracity, is due in part to the stereotype of the crazy cleric. If an ayatollah can issue a fatwa that calls for the death of an author – and it garners support from Muslims – it is not too much of a stretch to believe that a religious leader can issue a fatwa calling for anything else that will also capture Muslims' imagination.
For the uninitiated a fatwa is a legal opinion based on Islamic scripture and precedent, with people using them as guidance for temporal issues. Fatwas are neither binding nor universal, so one man's fatwa is another man's fiction. But alleged rulings on phallic food, air conditioning, necrophilia, triangular shaped snacks and wishing people a happy Christmas have turned what used to be a religious opinion on a specific, often personal matter into an expression of inanity and irrelevance. The word alleged is used here because it is sometimes difficult to establish who has said what, if indeed they said it at all.
But fatwas, whether imaginary or not, have become the regular focus of top 10 lists detailing the year's most outrageous rulings. There is even also something called The Fatwa Show that provides referencing and sources in order to prove these clerics and their statements are real; the one about contact lenses in particular is at once demoralising and priceless.
Back in 2007 the Guardian launched a weekly Muslim podcast called Islamophonic and its early editions featured a segment called Fatwa Focus, designed to highlight the perils of what Asra Nomani and others would later label “fatwa shopping”, namely seeking a religious ruling to suit one's needs in order to carry on doing something or to stop others from doing it.
The segment never took off because the feedback was that Muslims couldn't be so simple as to need a cleric to tell them whether it was acceptable to pluck eyebrows. But as one academic told Christian Science Monitor, anyone could “technically go online, set up a website, start generating fatwas, and acquire an audience”.
However this entrepreneurial aspect of the fatwa industry is only part of the problem, for the fatwa has become a catch-all term for an extreme religious position. Strange fatwas help to distort the way non-Muslims see Islam, reinforcing the belief that adherents agree with and even follow these advisories, when in reality they run counter to their interests and activities.
It does not require years of study to conclude that it is not acceptable to have sex with a corpse, that air conditioning does not compromise a woman's chastity and that it is not sensible, let alone theologically permissible, for women to travel to a war zone specifically to have casual and unprotected sex with complete strangers. These pronouncements do not draw on centuries of Islamic law but common sense and independent thought, qualities that appear to be lacking in both the clerics uttering these statements and the individuals with whom such fatwas resonate.
While bizarre fatwas are good for a laugh, they discredit the religion and its followers. They also reinforce the idea that fatwas are there for the benefit of men and that Muslims cannot think for themselves, especially when it comes to gender relations and sex. Indeed it has been argued that fatwas regarding women have little to do with Islam and everything to do with patriarchy, control and maintaining the status quo in society.
Rather than pandering to individuals who seek guidance in these matters, clerics could instead advise them to seek clinical help or refuse to engage with the topic altogether. But there is no regulation of fatwas and no quality control, so one warning about the dangers of tight tops can sit alongside another condemning female genital mutilation and suicide bombings.
It would be a welcome change if Muslims used fatwas for what they are – a religious opinion on a complex, personal and specific matter – rather than for asking a stupid question to get a stupid answer.
