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A different kind of fatwa
Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Mar 07, 2010
In the world of Islamic reform, the big news this week is that an eminent Pakistani sheikh has issued a 600-page fatwa against Muslim terrorism — with no qualifiers attached. You’d think I’d be celebrating.
Not really.
The very notion that 21st-century Muslims need a fatwa confirming the immorality of blowing each other up is, well, infantile. Frankly, it’s just another relic of the tribal mentality, in which the higher-ups do all the thinking for the lowly peeps.
The sooner Muslims wean ourselves off the fatwa fetish, the faster we’ll tap our potential to engage our own minds, hearts and consciences. As I’ll explain in my next book, it’s individuality — not deference to yet more external authority — that will spark the long-overdue liberal reformation within Islam.
You know whose fatwa I can endorse? Watch the video below:
Yep, I dig the idea of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Paine breaking the news to a violent jihadi that he’ll be spending eternity with them. After all, America’s founding fathers were a motley crew of Christians, skeptics, secularists and agnostics. That a true believer might have to share the afterlife with such infidels makes me smile.
Three cheers for a different kind of fatwa.
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