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In reply to the discussion: I do not need... Eurocentric feminists to dictate to me what I wear or shouldn't wear. [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)of the iranian state -- which means a person who controlled a military & intelligence apparatus with international reach.
yet rushdie lives, & khomeni is dead.
this 'fatwa' (if that isn't just misreporting by western media) is issued by someone who controls no such apparatus, a minor cleric who's organized a self-appointed morality squad.
tunisia doesn't have sharia law or sharia courts; they haven't had since the 1950s. tunisians aren't fundamentalists. tunisians have had access to western media for decades.
the link cited by Foreign Policy doesn't say anything about 'fatwa'.
http://www.kapitalis.com/societe/15111-tunisie-amina-doit-etre-lapidee-jusqu-a-la-mort-estime-un-predicateur-islamiste.html
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kapitalis.com%2Fsociete%2F15111-tunisie-amina-doit-etre-lapidee-jusqu-a-la-mort-estime-un-predicateur-islamiste.html
Also Adel Almi has been on Tunisian TV saying he didn't say she should be stoned (sorry, i saw the link yesterday but can't find it today. the tv show was the same one amina herself was on.)
maybe he's lying, maybe he's backstepping, i don't know. but that's what he said on tv.
btw, do you know what a fatwa is?
A fatwā is a learned opinion concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar.
In Sunni Islam any fatwā is non-binding, whereas in Shia Islam it could be considered by an individual as binding, depending on his or her relation to the scholar.
The person who issues a fatwā is called, in that respect, a Mufti, i.e. an issuer of fatwā, from the verb أَفْتَى 'aftā = "he gave a formal legal opinion on". This is not necessarily a formal position since most Muslims argue that anyone trained in Islamic law may give an opinion (fatwā on its teachings.
Some people use the term to mean an Islamic death sentence imposed upon a person. This is indeed one possibility among others (and would be in the case of something Haraam), though it is a rare use for a fatwā. The term's correct definition is broader, since a fatwā may concern any aspect of individual life, social norms, religion, war, peace, jihad, and politics.
A fatwā is not automatically part of Islamic teachings. While the person issuing it may intend to represent the teachings of Islam accurately, this does not mean that that person's interpretation will gain universal acceptance. There are many divergent schools within the religion, and even people within the same current of thought will sometimes rule differently on a difficult issue. This means that there are numerous contradictory fatwā, prescribing or proscribing a certain behavior. This puts the burden of choice on the individual Muslim, who, in case of conflict, will be forced to decide whose opinion is more likely to be correct.
There is a binding rule that saves the fatwā pronouncements from creating judicial havoc, whether within a Muslim country or at the level of the Islamic world in general: it is unanimously agreed that a fatwā is only binding on its author.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatw%C4%81