The Impact of the Fatwa on the Soul
A fatwa is not a passing remark that a mufti lets fall without any effect on the heart, soul, and state of the one who asks (for the fatwa). As an exposition of the Sharīʿah ruling, it casts its shadow over the questioner’s soul, heart, and even spirit. For this reason, scholars from early times have stressed the gravity of issuing fatwas. They insisted that the mufti must know the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), and the Arabic language. They also required him to understand people’s circumstances, customs, ways of thinking, and inner lives, so that his fatwa fits the reality in which they live.
Imam al-Nawawī (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “Issuing fatwas is a matter of great gravity and high standing, and of abundant merit. The mufti is an heir of the Prophets (peace and blessings be upon them) and fulfills a communal obligation (farḍ kifāyah), yet he is liable to error. This is why it was said: the mufti signs on behalf of Allah the Exalted.” [1]
The fatwa is a two-way encounter between mufti and questioner. Through it, the mufti can reach the depths of the questioner’s soul, discern the ailments it suffers, and recognize what correction or refinement it needs and what ruling suits it.
Nor should we overlook the fatwa’s role in bringing reassurance and calm to those who ask. When it comes from qualified and recognized scholars, it resolves many psychological difficulties that trouble people, such as depression, guilt, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and scruples about ritual purity (waswasat al-ṭahārah).
The Sunnah contains many ḥadīths that speak of the effect a fatwa has on the soul. One example is the report of Wābiṣah ibn Maʿbad al-Asadī, who said: “I came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), and he said: ‘Have you come to ask about righteousness and sin?’ I said: ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘Consult your heart. Righteousness is that with which the soul is at ease and the heart is at peace. Sin is that which stirs in the soul and wavers in the chest, even if people give you their opinions, and give them again.’” [2]
The states that come over the heart as a Muslim receives a fatwa give him signs about the course he is about to take.
The words “sin is what stirs in your soul and you dislike people finding out about it” mean that sin is whatever leaves a feeling of unease in the heart. This is a principle one may hold to in telling sin from righteousness: sin is what rankles in the breast and what its owner would not want others to learn of. [3]
A Muslim receiving a fatwa makes himself a scale by which to weigh what it produces in him. If it brings calm and reassurance, he proceeds. If it brings confusion and unrest, he holds back.
Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “The meaning is that when a matter is unclear to the traveler on the path, and he cannot tell which of the two categories it belongs to, he should reflect on it if he is qualified for independent reasoning (ijtihād), or ask those who are qualified if he is a follower (muqallid). If he finds what calms his soul, settles his heart, and opens his chest, let him take it and choose it for himself. Otherwise, let him leave it and take what carries no doubt or misgiving.” [4]
Consider how the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) guided a questioner who was perplexed by certain matters of his religion: he directed him to look at what the ruling brings about in the heart in the way of openness, and in the soul in the way of tranquility. Consider, too, the close tie this draws between the fatwa and the human soul.
The rulings of Islam, with their ease, their glad tidings, and their lifting of hardship, lead the soul to receive them with openness and reassurance. This is all the more true when we add an explanation of the wisdom and objectives behind them. Then the soul grows more settled and more convinced that these rulings came only from One who is All-Wise and All-Aware, and only for the good of the human being and the preservation of his five necessities: religion, life, lineage, property, and intellect.
A full awareness of the questioner’s inner state makes the fatwa more disciplined, more precise, and closer to human needs. It lets him feel Allah’s mercy and the ease He has granted His servants, and that feeling leads a person to embrace this religion with love and conviction. Neglecting the questioner’s inner state, by contrast, can produce many problems and grave consequences. It can burden people with the very hardship the noble Sharīʿah came to lift, and drive many away from observing the rulings of Islam. Some, we seek refuge in Allah, may even break away from the religion and abandon its rulings under the weight of harsh fatwas that rest on no sound scholarly method.
The authentic ḥadīth narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim [5] tells of a man who killed ninety-nine people. When he asked whether he could repent, someone ruled that there was no repentance for him. This drove him to despair and hopelessness, and he killed one more to make a hundred. But when he asked a more knowledgeable person, and explained his state of mind, he received an answer that gave him hope of salvation and was told to leave his surroundings for a righteous environment. This changed the man’s conduct, filling him with hope and joy in Allah’s mercy. He set out for a righteous village to worship Allah with its people, but died on the way, and the angels of mercy took his soul.
From another angle, a disciplined institutional fatwa protects the believer’s soul from the distraction, bewilderment, and unrest caused by anomalous fatwas that unqualified people issue on screens and social media.
A modern Muslim moving between social media platforms is bound to meet both the worthy and the worthless among the fatwas circulating there. This may leave him confused, anxious, and unsettled, or even without trust in anyone, so long as he has no reliable authority from which to receive a sound fatwa.
A disciplined fatwa also helps to restrain and refine the self. The human soul by nature inclines toward comfort, ease, and desire, and dislikes obligation and commitment. At times, it resorts to subterfuge, or bends rulings in its own favor. Institutional fatwas, grounded in scholarship, restrain the soul from such practices and leave no room for manipulation or evasion.
For all these reasons, whoever undertakes to issue fatwas must understand the hidden workings of the soul and know its faults and ailments, so that his fatwa suits the one who asks.
It behooves us as a society to make the fatwa a measure by which we set our souls right, and a shield that protects them from illness, from confusion and unrest, and from laxity and unruliness.
Finally, the fatwa, as a fence that guards the soul from what harms it, is an important pillar of mental health in the modern age, and one that must not be overlooked.
And the last of our prayer is that all praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
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Footnotes
[1] Al-Nawawī, Abū Zakariyyā Muḥyī al-Dīn Yaḥyā ibn Sharaf. Ādāb al-Fatwā wa’l-Muftī wa’l-Mustaftī. Edited by Bassām ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Jābī. Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1st ed., p. 13.
[2] Narrated by Aḥmad, 29/533, and al-Dārimī, 3/1649.
[3] Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd, Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Qushayrī. Sharḥ al-Arbaʿīn al-Nawawiyyah fī al-Aḥādīth al-Ṣaḥīḥah al-Nabawiyyah. Muʾassasat al-Rayyān, 2003, 6th ed., p. 94.
[4] Al-Qārī, ʿAlī ibn Sulṭān Muḥammad, Abū al-Ḥasan Nūr al-Dīn al-Mullā al-Harawī. Mirqāt al-Mafātīḥ Sharḥ Mishkāt al-Maṣābīḥ. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 2002, 1st ed., vol. 5, p. 1900.
[5] Narrated by al-Bukhārī, 4/174, and Muslim, 4/2118.
