Before answering, the sheikh asked the man: “Where are you from?” The man answered that he was from a north African Arab country. The sheikh asked him: “Don’t you have Muslim scholars in your country?” The man said he was from a small village that did not have any scholars. The sheikh then asked if there was any city nearby with scholars. The man answered in the affirmative. The sheikh said: “You left your scholars in your country to look for fatwa here? Go to the Muslim scholars in your country.”
Sheikh Attieh was true to the “fiqh of reality.” He knew that scholars in every single country were in a better position to give fatwas to their nationals, as they were well aware of the country’s circumstances. A few years ago, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper published a story of a man who had just come back from Afghanistan. He said he went there following a fatwa by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who had claimed that jihad in Afghanistan was a duty of every Muslim. The man was not convinced of the fatwa, so he traveled to Onaiza to see the late Sheikh Muhammad bin Al-Othaimeen. This sheikh told him that he could not give a fatwa on a situation he did not know. Under social pressure, Sheikh Al-Othaimeen, who was at that time imam of a mosque in Makkah, decided to travel along with a number of students to Afghanistan to see for himself if jihad there was a duty. He met a number of jihad leaders who told him they were not in need of fighters, but of money.
On coming back to Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Al-Othaimeen said jihad in Afghanistan was not a duty. The fatwa was against the wishes of the students, who were eager to go to Afghanistan, so they deserted him. The sheikh later changed his fatwa and continued work among these young men.
The important thing in this story is that Sheikh Al-Othaimeen gave us a lesson about the “fiqh of reality,” which says surrounding circumstances should be considered before the issuance of any fatwa. In other words, fatwa is not isolated from the circumstances and the condition in every country.
These two incidents came to my mind when I read an interview with the mufti of Mauritania Ahmed bin Al-Murabit, in which he said every country should mold its own fatwas keeping in view its circumstances.
One may ask if the exportation and globalization of fatwas is the cause for the state of chaos among Muslims. Has it caused the current intellectual conflicts in the Muslim world? Have politicians in some Arab countries taken advantage of fatwas in their favor? Lastly, what do scholars say about the nationalization of fatwas?
