The World of Fatwas - Or The Shariah in Action Book by Author Arun Shourie.
About this Book - Buy Book - Click Here - A fatwa is a decree, a ruling. The usual sequence is that a Muslim puts an issue before an authority, and the latter rules on the matter. The authorities that can issue a fatwa are well recognized. They can be individuals, they can be institutions-an institution like the Dar al-Ulum at Deoband has a special department for just this purpose. Of course the authority may take up a matter suo motu also. Download full PDF - Click Here
The fatwas accumulate. From time to time they are compiled. These compilations become both the high literature of the community as well as the Islamic version of Supreme Court Reports. They are read by, and read out to the faithful. The conduct, and even more so the mind of the community is set by them-directly in some matters, indirectly in even more. In particular, the local maulvi, to whom the average Muslim is liable to turn when he is in doubt about some point of conduct or when he is entangled in a dispute with another person, will turn to what some authority has decreed in its fatwa on the matter. Problems of life, belief and law which confront the believer are thus answered by the fatwas, explainsthe twelve-volume collection of fatwas issued by the Dar al-Ulum, Deoband, as there is no question about human life, it ex plains, for which the Mufti cannot obtain the answer by looking up the Book of Allah, the Sunna of the Prophet and the law books. Moreover, it explains, the fatwas have saved the ordinary Muslim 'the travails of inquiry' in regard to the Book, the Sunna and the rulings of the jurists of the schools of Islamic law. Issuing fatwas is an art, it explains, by which answers to day-to-day problems are obtained. One cannot obtain these answers from any other source, it declares. And, as will become apparent when we con sider the content and range of the subjects which the fatwas tackle, there can be no doubt that the mufti issuing fatwas has to have encyclopaedic knowledge-for he will be required to pro nounce on matters that range from personal hygiene, to marital relations, to the fine points of the law on inheritance, to whether the earth moves around the sun or the sun moves around the earth, to the way a Muslim should live in and the extent of alle giance he should owe to a country like India.
In the bookshops in the Muslim areas of our cities-for in stance in the bookshops around the Jama Masjid in Delhi-the collections of fatwas fill shelves after shelves. They are put to gether with great care, the sort of care one associates with sacred literature. The pages are well laid out. The calligraphy is often a work of art. The volumes are beautifully bound-ever so often with gilded embossingon the covers..... Read More
From Book Backcover - Why women are "The greatest affliction", "Majority in hell" - The powers a husband has over his wives. Why believers must put on non - believers down, why they must put them out? Why slaughtering cows is "A great Islamic Act" even though the Quran does not even mention it? From the ideology of separateness to that of separation or What attitude must believers have towards a Non - Islamic country? Should they accept the discoveries of Science when these contradict what is stated in the Quran and Hadis?
Book Details -
About the Author -
Scholar, author, former editor and minister, Arun Shourie is one of the most prominent voices in our country's public life and discourse. He has written over twenty-five bestselling books.
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