Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Fatwa |
FatwaNoun1. A ruling on a point of Islamic law that is given by a recognized authority. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Crosswords: Fatwa |
| English words defined with "fatwa": Ahmed Salman Rushdie ♦ Rushdie ♦ Salman Rushdie. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Fatwa" is also a word in the following language with English translations in parentheses. Indonesian (guidance of an older person, instructions). |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
In both theory and practice, different Islamic clerics can issue contradictory, or competing, fatwas. What happens then depends on whether one lives in a nation where Islamic law is the basis of civil law or if one lives where Islamic law has no legal status. It should be noted that many nations in which Muslims make up a majority of the population do not recognize Islamic law as the basis of civil law.
In nations based on Islamic law, fatwas by the national religious leadership are debated before being issued and are decided upon by consensus. In such cases they rarely are contradictory, and they carry the status of enforceable law. If two fatwas are contradictory, the ruling bodies (which combine civil and religious law) effect a compromise interpretation which is followed as law.
In nations that do not recognize Islamic law, religious Muslims are often confronted with two competing fatwas. In such a case, they would follow the fatwa of the leader in the same religious tradition as themselves. Thus, for example, Sunni Muslims would not hold by the fatwa of a Shiite or Sufi cleric.
See also: Blasphemy, list of Islamic terms in Arabic
External Links to several anti-Islam sources on fatwas delivering death threats:
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Fatwa."
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Civil Liberties | Bangladesh | Only those Muftis (religious scholars) who have expertise in Islamic law are authorized to declare a fatwa. (references) |
Bangladesh | However, in practice village religious leaders sometimes make declarations on individual cases, calling the declaration a fatwa. (references) | |
Human Rights | Iran | Several revolutionary foundations and a number of Majles deputies within Iran repudiated the Government's pledge and emphasized the "irrevocability" of the fatwa, or religious ruling, by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, calling for Rushdie's murder. (references) |
Women | Jordan | However, one southern tribe of Egyptian origin in the small village of Rahmah near Aqaba reportedly practices FGM. One local Mufti issued a fatwa stating that FGM "safeguards women's chastity and protects them against malignant diseases by preventing fat excretions." However, the Mufti also stated that as FGM is not a requirement of Islam, women who do not undergo this procedure should not be embarrassed. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Fatwa" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 98.18% of the time. "Fatwa" is used about 55 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 98.18% | 54 | 46,184 |
| Noun (proper) | 1.82% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 55 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
fatwa | 80 |
fatwa online | 8 |
fatwa online.com | 5 |
islamic fatwa | 4 |
1989 fatwa | 2 |
fatwa kebangsaan majlis | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "fatwa": fatwas. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-a-f-t-w" | |
-1 letter: waft. | |
-2 letters: aft, awa, fat, taw, twa, wat. | |
-3 letters: aa, at, aw, fa, ta. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-a-f-t-w" | |
+1 letter: fatwas. | |
+2 letters: waftage. | |
+3 letters: flatware, flatwash, flatways, waftages, warcraft. | |
+4 letters: afterward, flatwares, marrowfat, waitstaff, warcrafts, waterfall, waterleaf. | |
+5 letters: afterwards, flatwashes, marrowfats, waitstaffs, watercraft, waterfalls, waterleafs. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)46 61 74 77 61 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
|
| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
|
| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
|
| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
|
Morse Code (1836) (references)..-. .- - .--. .- |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
|
Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000110 01100001 01110100 01110111 01100001 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)F a t w a |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0046 0061 0074 0077 0061 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
|
Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)4067868967 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Quotations: Non-fiction 4. Usage Frequency | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Derivations 7. Anagrams 8. Orthography | 9. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
