Operating on consular-like hours (10 a.m. to 2 p.m.), what might be called the Fatwa Desk of Al Azhar University in Egypt pumps out religious decrees. One can imagine a sort of DMV-esque scene, with weary patrons padding along Cairo’s streets to get to the university early, trundling to the front of the line to query the “conscience of the nation” (as one Al Azhar-ite put it) on marriage, female driving rights, and appropriate apparel (to say nothing, of course, of whether drinking the Prophet’s urine constitutes a blessing or whether female workers can breastfeed their male counterparts).
Plus, anybody else who feels the urge can drop a fatwa. “In a faith with no central doctrinal authority, there has been an explosion of places offering fatwas, from Web sites that respond to written queries, to satellite television shows that take phone calls, to radical and terrorist organizations that set up their own fatwa committees.”
And all of this is making Egyptians a little weary, according to this NYT piece. The part about the Fatwa Industry is on page 2.
While the Israeli’s are developing “Innovative Covariance Matrix for Point Target Detection in Hyperspectral Images“, the Egyptians are squabbling over urine long-passed and asking old men about hymen-restoration surgery. Talk about a lack of individual imagination. This is the bastardization of the modern liberal state, a bizarre fascism in a religious module: we, the state, will buoy the “national conscience” with our selected members while brutally repressing opposition political groups. Jinkies.
To paraphrase Larry Diamond, elections doth not a democracy make.
In a culture heavy on propriety (perhaps “exclusively concerned with” would be a better phrase), the practice of getting a fatwa for even the most minute issue appears perhaps understandable, especially as a potentially powerful tool for women who would be unable to stand up to men without religious backing.
This is just too thorny to unpack completely here, but the end game is that the Egyptian nation is tugging itself in so many directions (yes, you can divorce your husband; yes, stone your cousin for converting to Christianity), is it any wonder that there appears no democratic traction?
UPDATE: Palestinian mufti issues a fatwa forbidding Palestinians from fleeing Gaza during the intense fighting detailed here. What the fatwa, indeed.
[...] Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of the Arab Republic of Egypt, the man who has had to cover for fatwas o.k.-ing adult breastfeeding at work and the beneficial qualities of drinking the Prophet’s ur…, writes in the Washington Post’s OnFaith today on the need for those who issue fatwas to [...]