In his weekly program on Alhurra’s digital platforms, author and journalist Ibrahim Eissa tackles what he calls the phenomenon of “fatwa madness,” asking: How did religion shift from being a source of guidance and peace to an authority that interferes in every detail of daily life?
Eissa argues that the explosion in the number of fatwas (Islamic Sharia edicts) – to more than 1.4 million issued last year in Egypt alone – is not a sign of religiosity but rather an indication of anxiety, moral disorientation, and the encroachment of religious guardianship into people’s most personal affairs.
He explains how people’s questions have shifted from “Is this right or wrong?” to “Is this halal or forbidden?” and how Salafist rhetoric and political Islam have conditioned people to consult clerics on everything big or small. He also dissects how fatwas have turned into a massive consumer market where official institutions and extremist groups compete for control over people’s minds and morals.
The following is an edited summary of the episode for easier reading:
From Guidance to Domination
Perhaps you’ve heard the Salafi fatwa that requires anyone who eats camel meat to perform ablution afterward. It only get worse. Today, we’re witnessing millions of such rulings. For example, Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta (Sharia Ordinance Authority) announced that it received about 1.4 million requests for fatwas in 2024 alone. Imagine – Egyptians requested nearly a million and a half religious rulings!
This raises serious questions: Are people really that ignorant of their religion? Or are they simply that confused? To what extent have they dragged religion into matters it was never meant to govern? Why do they believe faith must intrude into every corner of their lives? Does every move really require a fatwa? Religion was meant to guide and enlighten – you as a human being can live according to decency, ethics, and law without constantly asking a cleric for permission.
Of all these fatwas, 67 percent deal with family and personal matters – including the most intimate aspects of marital life. That tells us something profound: religion has expanded from guiding the public sphere to ruling private life and the inner conscience. This enormous number doesn’t merely reflect religious devotion; it reveals a loss of
independent moral compass and a complete reliance on clerical authority for reassurance, even in the simplest of acts.
That’s the success of political Islam, Salafism, and Wahhabism – inserting religion into everything, down to how one enters the bathroom. People have become paralyzed with anxiety, unable to act naturally or humanely without consulting an Imam of Mufti. Every action, no matter how trivial triggers the question: “Should I ask the sheikh what to do?” It’s a strange and worrying phenomenon.
When jurisprudence infiltrates these intimate spaces, no free or civic sphere remains outside religious control. Life itself becomes subject to clerical supervision.
The Fatwa as a Consumer Market
This inflation of fatwas reveals something deeper about their very nature. Demand for religious opinions has always existed – but never on this industrial scale. The fatwa has become a consumer product.
In recent decades, we’ve witnessed the commodification of fatwas. They are now sold, broadcast, and packaged for consumption. At one point, advertisements read: “Call for a fatwa – answer within 24 hours, call cost: 2 pounds.” That was the fatwa business. Today, Fatwas are digital products – sent by email or broadcast live on television, where the viewer receives the answer instantly on air.
But despite all this commercialization, one fundamental truth remains: a fatwa is not binding. Even a ruling from the highest Islamic authority has no legal or religious compulsion. A state may adopt a fatwa into law, but individuals remain free to act as they wish.
If Dar al-Ifta declares men’s gold wedding rings forbidden, you may still wear one. If it rules bank interest permissible, others are free to reject it. There is no binding fatwa, because for every question there are countless interpretations. Ask about chess, and you’ll find hundreds of conflicting answers.
The Duty of the Mufti – and the Struggle for Authority
Dear Sheikh, when someone asks for a fatwa, your duty is to present all scholarly opinions, not just your own. You should say: “Scholar A said this, Scholar B said that,” then offer your personal conclusion. Presenting a single answer as the absolute truth is deception – especially in attempts to “unify fatwas.” A unified fatwa is a contradiction in terms; fatwas by nature are plural and interpretive.
Dar al-Ifta exists to answer those who ask, not to dictate what to believe. It should explain the range of views, not impose one. Yet some seek to unify both the issuing body and the fatwa itself – a step toward a theocratic state. That’s how Taliban and Iran operate.
The Prophet’s saying “Consult your heart” terrifies them – because it frees people from their dominance. They respond, “But how can anyone consult their heart without being a scholar?”
Here lies the paradox: Was the Qur’an revealed to scholars alone? Of course not. It was revealed to all believers. Each person is responsible for their own conscience and understanding. God will judge individuals by their actions — not by someone else’s fatwa.
Encouraging blind dependence on clerics strips people of their reason and moral agency, perpetuating the power of religious domination.
The Push to “Unify” Fatwas
The drive to unify fatwas reflects a broader ambition – control over the Muslim mind. To dominate, one must first shut the door of ijtihad (unfettered independent reasoning) and declare: “This is the only correct fatwa.”
That erases diversity, evolution, and local context. They want one source, one ruling, one authority – and absolute obedience. This is the architecture of a religious state.
Unifying fatwa bodies makes sense only when a non-civil state enacts laws referencing a single clerical authority. But for ordinary citizens, no fatwa is binding – not from Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholars, nor Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta. People are free to follow any scholar from anywhere in the world.
Fatwas change with time and place. None are eternal or permanent. Yet ironically, the very institutions that issue them shift positions constantly – often according to political winds. Look at their stances toward Sayyid Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood: condemned in the 1960s, tolerated in the 1970s, rehabilitated or reinterpreted later. The fatwas keep changing – and still they demand obedience.
The Battle for Religious Authority – and the Fatwas of Terror
In the end, the world of fatwas is a marketplace. Official institutions seek monopoly, barring others from competition: “Only we may issue fatwas!” It’s also, Eissa notes, “a struggle for livelihood.”
The state argues that extremist groups issue dangerous fatwas – so it promotes its own as “moderate” alternatives. Yet in truth, all fatwas, even those of extremists, draw on the
same classical scriptures. None invent rulings from thin air; every faction has its own scholars and sources.
Trying to isolate extremist interpretations creates a crisis of reference, because Islam’s foundational texts contain both the language of mercy and of combat. Jihadists invoke the same scripture as the establishment – just differently.
Hence the constant power struggle: ISIS enforces its fatwas by the sword; governments seek to enforce theirs through law and media. Both claim exclusive authority over the truth.
Eissa concludes that the individual must reclaim their own moral compass. A fatwa must evolve with its time and context; no ruling is universal or eternal. Resistance to change is resistance to reasoning – and resistance to reasoning is resistance to freedom.
