T S M U I T IFT5” BlackwellOxford,MUWOMuslim0027-4909©October964ORIGINAL 2006 WorldHartfordUK 2006 Publishing ARTICLE Seminary Ltd TheT S M M UW I T Ifta[*3][002] Shifting Moral Universes of the Islamic Tradition of Ifta”: A Diachronic Study of Four Adab al-Fatwa Manuals Alexandre Caeiro ISIM Leiden, The Netherlands he importance of Islamic non-binding opinions, or fatwas, for scholarly research is now well-established. Perceiving the fatwa as a meeting T point between legal theory and social practice — an understanding which is shared by many contemporary muftis — historians, legal scholars, and anthropologists have dressed a rich catalogue of the functions of fatwas in Muslim Societies. Although this literature is too extensive to be reviewed here, there appear to be four interrelated thematic levels: fatwas as legal tools; as social instruments; as political discourses; and as doctrinal-reform devices. As technical tools, fatwas were part of the litigation process, issued at the request of the qadi (judge) and impacting court cases; fatwas were also cheaper and less conflictual alternatives to legal proceedings. They are thus not mere reflections of legal practice, but distinct contributions to the relationship between law and society. Fatwas routinely contributed to the social stability of Muslim communities by “providing formal administrative organization and informal networks for running the affairs of society.”1 They provided a sense of order and identity, circumscribing, in the elegant formulation of Skovgaard-Petersen, “the mental and moral universe of their day, always balancing around the boundaries of what is conceivable, legitimate and right.”2 Varying in time, place, and circumstance, as the stylized formula goes, fatwas were historically a privileged genre for the development of Islamic law, incorporating into the furu“ (branches of fiqh) 661 T M W • V 96 • O 2006 — or rejecting as bid“a (innovation) — new and old (i.e., customary) social, economic and technological practices.3 As a form of knowledge central to Muslim societies, fatwas naturally generated power and control, permeating social relations at many levels.4 They articulated doctrinal and political struggles between competing factions through the notorious “fatwa wars,” one opinion creating the space in which a counter-fatwa contested the former’s legitimacy. Fatwas intervened variously in political processes. Their use for condemning heterodox Muslims as apostates, largely responsible for the negative connotations the term evokes today, are contested practices that function in situations of social upheaval as formidable mechanisms of repression of specific groups, such as intellectuals or women. In 1965, one of the greatest scholars of Islamic law famously argued that the practice of fatwas was falling into “disuse” and becoming “obsolescent.”5 Unfortunately, the reasons for the contemporary vitality of the genre do not seem to have sustained much interest from scholars. Drawing on the existing scholarship, a number of primary sources, and fieldwork with muftis based in Western Europe, this article is an attempt to make sense of the historical permanency of fatwas by locating them within a specific tradition. It constitutes a preliminary exploration of the moral economy underlying the fatwa that seeks to introduce more anthropological concerns into a field largely dominated by legal and Islamic studies. The Practice of Ifta} In many recent accounts muftis are perceived as typical actors and their activity of ifta” (fatwa-giving) is depicted in a de-historicized manner, with little consideration given to the (shifting) moral universes in which they operate.6 In order to correct this misleading representation, I argue, one should conceptualize ifta’ as an Islamic discursive tradition, which, in the words of anthropologist Talal Asad, consists of “discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a history.”7 Asad borrows the concept from moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for whom a tradition is “an historical extended, socially embodied argument” sustained by “the exercise . of the relevant virtues.”8 These discourses connect between temporalities; they are conceptually related to a past and a future through a present. Ifta’ is central to an Islamic tradition conceived not only as a “cognitive framework,” but also as “a practical mode of living, ( . ) techniques for teaching body and mind to cultivate specific virtues and abilities that have been authorized, passed on, and reformulated down the generations.”9 Like sermons and other Muslim technologies, fatwas are not only instruments for learning rules and 662 T S M U I T IFT5” procedures, but also tools for creating the emotional dispositions necessary to the formation of pious Muslim selves. Although tensions inherent in the concept have yet to be fully theorized,10 tradition fundamentally shifts our attention from Weberian ideal-types of religious authority toward a study of modes of reasoning and their relation to embodied practices. It provides a link between forms of religiosity and the structures that (re)produce authority, conceived here following Asad as, “a collaborative achievement between narrator and audience [where] the former cannot speak in total freedom: there are conceptual and institutional conditions that must be attended to if discourses are to be persuasive.”11 The specific normative criteria standards — Asad’s “conceptual and institutional conditions” — that define the correct performance of ifta” provide a historically situated context in which one can start to understand Muslim religiosities and conceptions of authority. In my attempt to describe these criteria and the way they have shifted over time, I am particularly indebted to Charles Hirschkind’s gripping account of the interplay between sermons, media practices, and state formation in modern Egypt.12 Adab Al-Fatwa Treatises The institutional conditions that regulate the practice of ifta’ are spelled out in minute detail in the adab al-fatwa literature, suggesting a control and reflexivity of the fatwa genre greater than that of the khu†ba (sermon).13 This vigorous regulation is partly a counterpoint to the openness and permeable character of the activity, which has always to some extent eluded political attempts at institutionalization and monopolization, and stands as a testimony to its symbolic importance. Although the existing research is not silent on this,14 the relatively minor scholarly attention devoted to the adab al-fatwa seems related to the notion that, as an idealized account, the genre would have little to reveal about the history and dynamics of ifta’. Usually located in the usul al-fiqh (roots of Muslim law), this literature is nevertheless an apposite place to search, in diachronic fashion, for developments in the representation of religious authority and agency. Although traditionally directed at the literate elite, it gives advice for all the stages of the futya (consultation), suggesting the process is conceived of as a type of (admittedly asymmetrical) dialogue. The composition of an adab al-fatwa treatise is usually presented by its author as a mere reiteration of a well established, though perhaps neglected, Islamic discipline. The need to write it suggests a (real or perceived) crisis of the muftiship, hinting at possible transformations within Muslim institutions and structures of religious authority. While the nature and context of such crises can be expected to vary, the end product of such efforts inevitably involves a selection, re-valorization, and re-interpretation of the old discipline. 663 T M W • V 96 • O 2006 The adab al-fatwa usually starts with a discussion of the social and religious relevance of fatwas, and often includes a section on the role of muftis at the time of its composition. The genre can thus be said to be animated by a sense of contemporaneity.15 To describe some continuities and changes in ifta’, I draw initially on three texts. The treatise of Abu ‘Amr ‘Uthman Ibn al-Salah al-Shahrazuri (1181–1245), known as Ibn al-Salah, constitutes an exposition of the adab al-fatwa that I treat as exemplary of the pre-modern modes of the genre.16 Written in Damascus, like Ibn al-Salah’s text, but in the late Ottoman Empire, is my second source: the 1911 treatise of Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi (1866–1914), Al-fatwa fi-l islam. This work represents an early attempt to respond to the challenges posed by modern conditions within the new temporality and ethos of the Salafiyya movement.17 My third text is Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s (b. 1926) Al-fatwa bayna al-indiba† wa l-tasayyub, published at the end of the 20th century in three capitals of the Middle East,18 and reading as a reassertion of the role fatwas can, or perhaps should, play in an age when they are no longer self-evident. Despite the somewhat arbitrary nature of the selection, my aim here is to start an exploration of the contextual reformulations involved in the composition of adab al-fatwa manuals — and I hope to show in what follows how the three texts considered here fittingly serve this purpose. Ibn al-2alah al-Shahrazuri Ibn al-Salah al-Shahrazuri’s work has been a central formulation of the adab al-fatwa of the Shafi‘i school for many centuries. Presented by its late 20th century Egyptian publisher as a founding text,19 it provides the core of Al-Nawawi’s (1233–1277) later and perhaps more famous discussion of the topic.20 Originally from Iraq, Ibn al-Salah studied in the Khurasan before settling in Damascus, where he became a respected scholar with numerous students. Renowned for his fatwas and knowledge of hadith, his books are reported to have been “highly valued.”21 Ibn al-Salah’s text is conventionally divided in three main sections: the shurut al-mufti section sets out the qualifications for practitioners; the adab al-fatwa is a discourse on the very technology of fatwas; and the adab al-mustafti instructs petitioners on the adequate manners and procedures.