I'm issuing a fatwa saying this is a clear explanation.

dear matthew,

you can't. not even every and any muslim can issue a fatwa. while there are no codified rules, it is understood that a muslim who would like to be a mufti (i.e., someone who can give a fatwa - both words have the same root f-t-w) has to have had significant training in islamic theology, maybe even jurisprudence (both are intertwined), and has to have some standing within his community.

also - in sunni islam (90% of all muslims) fatwas are not binding. we keep making jokes that if you want a certain answer to your question it's just a matter of trying out enough muftis 'till you've found one who tells you what you want to hear.

as the head of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the most important (Sunni) university, said "Fatāwa [pl. of fatwa] issued by Al-Azhar are not binding; individuals are free to accept them or not." (taken from, where else, the wiki article on "fatwa")

for instance, the 1998 call by usama bin ladin to wage war against "jews and crusaders" would not be regarded as a serious fatwa by most muslims, even by supporters of usama bin ladin, because it is known that he does not have enough theological/legal training to give legal opinions.

cheers,

--raf*

And to repeat my response from further down the same thread,

eerie: In fact she is not under any death sentence. No whackjob Islamic scholar has issued a fatwa calling for her death. Or Irshad Manji’s death, for that matter.

t. rev: You’re right. I was reacting to the statement “If you’re lucky, some wacko will release a fatwa that demands you be stoned, beheaded or strung up in some elaborate medieval way.” and overextended the point. My mistake.

eerie: Of course, as we have seen with Rushdie, apostasy fatwas issued by loony takfirists make for great publicity in the Western media. Quite useful if you’re publishing a book.

t. rev: …and on the other hand, it’s still an obnoxious statement. Tell the translators who’ve been murdered what a boost it was for their careers.

And I do have at least a general notion of the definition of a fatwa and the decentralized nature of Islamic jurisprudence, and I know that the fatwa against Rushdie was significant mainly because of the temporal authority of Khomeni.

Not that it's directly relevant, but I also can also distinguish an Arab from a Muslim, from a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, from a Salafist, from whatever you call the ideology in charge of Iran. Khomenist? Anyway. We're not all mouth-breathers out here, pointing at the middle east and saying "hurr hurr hurr, towel-heads!"

dear t.rev,

what is the point of your comment here? i don't get it.

--raf*

Anyway. We're not all mouth-breathers out here, pointing at the middle east and saying "hurr hurr hurr, towel-heads!"

Very true, you're clearly not an idiot.

Around here, we have a little thing called "The Syriana Test" to separate morons from the genuinely curious and open-minded (actually it's more for determining whether or not we should sleep with certain people, but let's leave that aside for now). Unreasonable, ignorant bigots are forced to take "The Lounsbury Test", which I will not describe any further as he does daily demonstrations on his blog.

Anyway, welcome.

dear raf*,

(how do you get that header?)

I am the author of the comment at My Quiet Life

Crooning “Oh, oh, I’m under a death sentence, oh, oh, they’re coming to chop off my head, oooooh I’m so scaaaared” is lame snotty mockery when the target of your mockery actually is under a death sentence and people actually are getting killed.

*Raf --

"dear matthew,

you can't. not even every and any muslim can issue a fatwa. while there are no codified rules,. . ."

Mine was a kaffir fatwa. Non-binding and non-existent. But factually correct.

T.rev --

We're not all mouth-breathers out here, pointing at the middle east and saying "hurr hurr hurr, towel-heads!"

True, I'm sure. The above only applies to members of Congress.

dear eerie,

After googling "The Syriana Test" to see the definition, I am afraid that I would probably fail it, since I have the attention span of a housefly. But thank you for your kind remarks.

So we're pissing and moaning about fatwas and whinging on about mocking self-promotion that also has a small component of risk in it?

How very precious.

Frankly, given the success rate of high profile write a book and the like personal death-fatouas, strikes me as a pretty good return on your money and a good career boost.

If you're a writer or itching to be a professional Anti Fatoua pundit. T Rev finds this obnoxious. Well, the truth is often obnoxious when stripped of its little pieties and precious dancing around reality.

I personally found the mockery well placed for most of its targets, above all in the atmosphere of overdone high-dungeon and chicken-littlish fear mongering that surrounds the issue (and is used to lend gravitas to profoundly twittish writters, as well as one has to confess, not twittish or at least not profoundly so, writers).

By the way, Raf Bey, you truly have the heart and spirit of a Faqih. When I finally muster up the clarity of thought regarding gathering proofs justifying a fatoua justifying whacking my McDo eating, suburbanite American, kufaar, prophets insulting, dim-witted relations, I will surely come to you, before shopping around more for some more amenable if perhaps somewhat dim faqih.

The Lounsbury,

The mortality rate seems to be more than small, at least for people associated with Rushdie, who would appear to be the best-known test case. Clearly, there are people who are happy to risk death in exchange for celebrity, but it doesn't follow that anyone who risks death is attempting that particular exchange.

dear t.rev,

for the header - just look at my blog. there's even a "raf* bey f.a.q."

i personally found wafa sultan's "what he says means i now have a death fatwa proclaimed on me" to be a bit of hyperbole. the better answer would've been "good muslims are smarter than following your takfirism, mr. islamist".

ya abu l-maal,

uh ... ok. it's all about "construing self-defense". no prob, that one.

--raf*

dear RAF*,

By "header" I meant the "dear nameinboldsmallcaps" that everyone here seems to use, not the asterisk.

I guess I'm missing some context in Sultan's case, as I avoided reading the NYT article; I generally find the NYT to be worse than useless when it comes to communicating information.

t. rev: The standard HTML bold tag <b> does that here. The standard HTML <strong> tag is regular boldface.

Ah, they attacked me with a bacon.

Else, for t rev, simply code with standard html to get that effect.

Our editor strangely chose to map that function to .

Bah, it's a bloody deprecated tag, strong is the standard usage. Whiner.

Plus it takes so little typing if one wants to apply the style. Much easier than messing with divs and such.

I would holding that NYT is "worse than useless for conveying information" is a bit of precious ideological glurge far more deserving of criticism than anything eerie stated (other than her profoundly bizarre and irritating choice of mapping style sheets).

Wanker.

dear all,

i actually just wanted to have the name of the addressee (which i usually abbreviate) in bold font. and then this happened.

until right now i thought that and were the same thing. what then, is the difference between and ?

dear t.rev,

my idea to actually get people to READ THE "ASHRAF AL-MANSUR TRILOGY" by JON COURTNAY GRIMWOOD which i LINKED IN MY BLOG ... completely didn't work.

that is one of my great experiences of 2005. bloggers and blog readers are not as smart as i thought.

oh well ...

--raf*

dear all,

i meant that i thought "b" and "strong" are the same thing. and was inquiring about the diff between "i" and "em".

stupid html-tags.

--raf*

This is bold

This is strong

<b> is an archaic tag, so I restyled it so that non-technical authors could still apply the style (it is also one of the default allowable tags for comments).

<i> is the deprecated version of <em>. On 'Aqoul there is no visible difference between them.

dear The Lounsbury,

The only definition I can find for 'glurge' is the following:

Glurge is a term term coined by Pat Chapin from Three Mermaids, a regular contributor to the Urban Legends Mailing List maintained by David and Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes. It was created as a way to describe the unique feelings evoked after reading missives, and is considered onomatopoeic.

My reference to my regard for the NYT was intended to be explanatory of other behavior, not any kind of critical exegesis, but since you bring it up: when the NYT writes about a subject I have personal knowledge of, they invariably botch it, both by getting the details wrong, and by imposing one of a limited number of narrative contexts, the most prominent of which can be titled "Let's You And Him Fight" and "Those Non-New Yorkers Sure Are Dumb And Mildly Threatening, But We Should Pity Them Because They Just Can't Help It".

I just assume they tend toward the same behavior when writing about subjects I don't have personal knowledge of.

Dear raf*,

I have trouble reading anything more complex than Terry Pratchett novels these days, but I'll keep an eye out for this Grimwood fellow.

First, as to the tags:

Instead of the annoying IT speak "deprecated" I shall use "disapproved of"

Being well aware that for some reason some poorly socialised nerd 'disapproved of' despite its simplicity and ease which one can type, and created for reasons best known to his pus-infested self, I nevertheless retain my fondness for the old b form - most of all for when one is typing out HTML by hand. It would have been preferable, in my mind, to have opted for the "disapproved of" b rather than the faddish "strong" - however I defer to Mum, the Editor in Chief who is wiser in these areas.

Second, as to the issue of the NYT and the pretention that it invariably botches everything - I still find it overdone. NYT certainly leaves a lot to be desired for a paper in its reputational position, but hardly is that bad. Still, points for style and not using the ridiculous MSM phrase.

Finally, re l-Faqih and the problem of self-defence. A porc and a skewer. I believe I have it. Or corned Ham. I am not sure what Corned Ham is....

It would have been preferable, in my mind, to have opted for the "disapproved of" b rather than the faddish "strong" - however I defer to Mum, the Editor in Chief who is wiser in these areas.

Actually there is a whole "philosophy" behind the tag changes as HTML becomes more strict and XML-like. Nerd philosophy, to be sure, but there is often great wisdom to be found in the Doritos & Jolt set. In truth I am one of them, except that I blend seamlessly into non-nerd society.

It wouldn't be terribly hard to switch things around to suit your preference. Would have to think through all the possible implications (global change, unforeseen impact).

"there is a whole "philosophy" behind the tag changes as HTML becomes more strict and XML-like"

Is that, like Wahhabi XML, or are there Sufi variants?

And what is meant by "more strict and XML-like" that us deprecated non-techies can understand? And what is it with techie world where a) they can invent elaborate acornyms for hypertext markup language but b) can't think of more sensible terms than cute but on-face meaningless idiocies like WYSIWYG and "worm" or "bug" for others? Is there no middle ground of clever terms that are informative yet self-explanatory?

And what in God's name has happened to the concept of the "off switch" in which you hit a switch and a thing turns off. . . right then!! Like a TV or a radio. Now we have a complex printing device using toner and electric pulses converted from bits and bytes, and give off all kinds of whirrs and beeps but does not have an on or off switch to simply stop it, anywhere on it? In an emergency panic you pull the plug like a caveman trying to figure out a strange god-like object?

Or you turn a program OFF on your screen and it sits there for 10 seconds doing nothing then all kinds of questons and whirrs for 15 seconds ot minutes and nothing else works then all kinds of error messages....Meanwhile, a complex organism like myself can stop work in a millisecond doing just about anything. I can die in a moment's time. But a computer has a whole procedure just to stop.

Wish we could block death that way.

"Would you like to die now? Dying now will erase all memory... Are you sure you would like to die now?" "Make sure no other person is running while you die. Death failed as another program was opened while you died." "It is not recommended you die until all other activities are down." "In dying you performed an illegal operation and that will be shut down. It is now safe to die."

Anti-techie rant over.

Is that, like Wahhabi XML, or are there Sufi variants?

And what is meant by "more strict and XML-like" that us deprecated non-techies can understand?

The short answer is that it will make the web easier to use (because machines will be able to locate/aggregate useful info for humans more efficiently). A slightly longer answer is here, but it is filled with ugly acronyms.

can't think of more sensible terms than cute but on-face meaningless idiocies like WYSIWYG and "worm" or "bug" for others

I'd say these terms describe behaviour rather than form, but tech terminology is hardly consistent, just like any other language. Asking for tech jargon to be self-explanatory is like a Spanish-speaker asking for Russian words to be self-explanatory. Requires translators.

And what in God's name has happened to the concept of the "off switch" in which you hit a switch and a thing turns off. . . right then!!

TVs and radios are simple creatures. They don't require 1-15 min of calibration and diagnostics after each startup. For simple printers, I find sliding my hand down the right side usually works for finding the master switch. For complex "always-on" machines, it's easier to just ask them to sleep. Then they won't have to spend ages recalibrating after a sudden shutdown. Imagine if someone tried to hit you with a frying pan rather than just asking you nicely to go to bed.

Or you turn a program OFF on your screen and it sits there for 10 seconds...whirrs for 15 seconds ot minutes...all kinds of error messages

Porn sites. Don't visit them without protection.

More seriously, this suggests your system needs a tune-up and/or has been compromised by Trojans.

(these Trojans, not these ones)

Not these ones?

Good Lord - I've stumbled upon a site for Orientalists interested in HTML.

"Good Lord - I've stumbled upon a site for Orientalists interested in HTML"

And why not? After all, HTML has no written vowels.

The other guest on the program, identified as an Egyptian professor of religious studies, Dr. Ibrahim al-Khouli, asked, "Are you a heretic?" He then said there was no point in rebuking or debating her, because she had blasphemed against Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

Did NYT get this from MEMRI or something?

I just relistened to this bit to check that al-Jazeera's transcript is right:

إبراهيم الخولي: أنا بأسألك لأعاملك بمنطقك، إن كنتِ ملحدة فلا عتب عليكِ إن سببتِ الإسلام ونبي الإسلام وقرآن الإسلام..

It is. The guy says: "I'm asking you so I can deal with you by your own logic. If you're an apostate, there's no rebuking you if you insulted Islam, etc". Sounding pretty pissed off, one can add, but going on to say:

وحينما يسب غير المسلم الإسلام ونبي الإسلام لا يحرك شعرة في رأسنا، نعذره إن كان جاهلا ونقبل إن كان متعصبا حاقدا لأنه ليس محاسَبا بمعاييرنا ولا بمقاييسنا،

I believe the technical term in Arabist literature for that kind of fatwa is hugs and puppies.

I mean, I personally went to listen to that thing rooting for his curmudgeonly conspiracy-theorist behind to get a decent kicking (was underwhelmed), and there probably are more than enough wackos out there at the moment who wouldn't mind getting a go at that lady.

But gimme a break. Is a freely available transcript beyond the realm of fact checking?

وحينما يسب غير المسلم الإسلام ونبي الإسلام لا يحرك شعرة في رأسنا، نعذره إن كان جاهلا ونقبل إن كان متعصبا حاقدا لأنه ليس محاسَبا بمعاييرنا ولا بمقاييسنا،

"I believe the technical term in Arabist literature for that kind of fatwa is hugs and puppies."

Maybe it's the insomnia, but I don't know any Arabic. So what does that second chunk actually say, then? Is there any possibility that there was a difference of interpretation, or has the whole thing been manipulated?

Let's see...

When a non-Muslim insults Islam and the Prophet of Islam, let not a hair move on our heads. Let us forgive him if he's ignorant and let us accept him if he's a hateful extremist, because he isn't accountable by our standards and measures.

I don't know if there was any deliberate manipulation on anyones part, but certainly some overdramatization which has found a receptive audience in the US.

If that's actually what it says, then I don't see how any reasonable person could draw the conclusion that the guy was calling for any kind of violence. (Unless there is some other place where he said that she should be considered a Muslim even though she apparently no longer considers herself one, and then calls for violence.)

To be fair to Ms. Sultan (or try to), the first exchange constisted of cross-talk with a trans-Atlantic delay. She probably couldn't make out much more than "apostate? apostate?". Now, if I thought there was a fatwa over my head, I would have taken the trouble to check the transcript. Still, regardless of what the guy said afterwards, I do believe that having one's apostasy being dwelled upon on al-Jazeera may be hazardous to one's health, in virtue of, say, Hadeeth 9:84:57 in Saheeh al-Bukhari.

Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to 'Ali and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn 'Abbas who said, "If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah's Apostle forbade it, saying, 'Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire).' I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah's Apostle, 'Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him.'"

This is where fatwas enter into the picture.

A more relevant question is the word that was used, mulhid. It can mean simply atheist, and I can't recall if there was anything on the program that identified Wafa Sultan as a former Muslim. I'm also not really sure when and by whom the different variants (mulhid, kafir, zindeeq, murtadd) are used in real life. Perhaps someone who actually speaks Arabic can enlighten us about the fine points of usage.

At the risk of assigning work I cant do to others, it might not hurt to run the jazeera transcript in English. It'd be a scoop.

I think that's an excellent idea, but of course, that's easy for me to say (also having no idea of how long the darn thing is, or at least the relevant portions). I promise to do any reasonable translations of things that might pop up in languages I actually do know, in return, if the need arises.

Michael, she was never identified as a Muslim former or otherwise in the interview and even if mulhid simply did mean atheist it still makes her a kafira whether she is murtada or not. All atheists are kufaar as are all who do not belong to an Abrahamic religion (as they are referred to in the Quran as ahl-kitaab or people fof the Book) although the latter have also been widely and erroneously tarred with the brush of kufr as well.
A Kafir is not necessarily a mulhid, the latter does not believe in any god while the former may have a religion whether it's pagan, Hindu etc.
A murtadd is someone who has rejected Islam, whether to embrace another religion or to become a mulhid.
A zindeeq is just someone who is generally irreligious, bohemian and just a bad sort. Bizzarely, in common usage where I am from it is a rather endearing term given to someone who is just a lovable rogue.

Re Matthew's suggestion and Eva's enthusiasm, I (and I KNOW I am going to regret this) will have a look at the transcript and see if I have the time to translate it however loathe I am to give the woman more publicity.

"Re Matthew's suggestion and Eva's enthusiasm, I (and I KNOW I am going to regret this) will have a look at the transcript and see if I have the time to translate it however loathe I am to give the woman more publicity."

It could be a team effort; there's more talent here. And she's going to get publicity with her new book and another round of this interview will be going around then.

Thanks, Meph.

So, to summarize, it sounds like mulhida was the most precise way to ask if she was an atheist. If the guy wanted to say "apostate", he would probably have used the word murtadda. MEMRI's "heretic" seems to make little sense, and in general it's hard to conceive how one could misrepresent the exchange so badly in good faith. That said, among the many Opposite Direction viewers seriously pissed off by Ms. Sultan's Mulsim-bashing, there's bound to be an assortment of homicidal nutjobs. None with sufficient geographical access, one hopes.

Oh, and the guy who wrote the NYT story is clearly a card-carrying member of reporters sans clue.

Good luck with the translation...

dear meph,

funnily, in persian "zendegi" means "life". but it's written with a "ﮒ" (gaf = kaf with double upwards stroke), not a "qaf".

on the other hand, since arabic words with more than 3 radicals are often "imported", it could be that both the arabic z-n-d-q and the persian z-n-d-g have the same ancestor, particularly when taking into account that in many dialects of the arabian peninsula the "q" is pronounced as "g". crazy badu ...

--raf*

Just to throw my two cents in, Persian is Indo-European, Arabic is of course Semitic, and the two languages are completely unrelated. Ergo, one of them imported z-n-d-q (g). Which I don't know, but saying they have the same ancestor would, in the context of historical linguistics, be incorrect, since it would imply that the two languages are related. It would be correct & accurate to say that one imported from the other, of course.
Splitting hairs, I know. Carry on.

Persian -gi is a suffix that makes nouns from adjectives (apparently not to be confused with the Turkish -gi suffix that marks professions in spoken Arabic). The adjective is zende, which means alive. I can't say if it's related to any common Indo-European root (to live was jivai(ti) in Old Persian, which will sound very familiar if you know a Slavic language).

But aqa raf* does seem to be on to something. Lisan al-`Arab (via www.alwaraq.net) says:

الزِّنْدِيقُ: القائل ببقاء الدهر، فارسي معرب، وهو بالفارسية:زَنْدِ كِرَايْ، يقول بدوام بقاء الدهر

zindeeq: one who asserts the perpetuity of time. Arabicized Persian zandi-kirai.

I don't recognize the Persian, but then I don't actually know Persian...

That's not the only theory in town. My Persian dictionary by Haim speculates that zindeeq (which, unsurprisingly is also a Persian word) may have been an Arabicized derivation of zend, a term for Pehlevi translations of Avesta.

In any case, independent observers agree that the Persians must be behind zandaqa in one way or another.

Two comments, ignoring the side-trips into HTML and Arabic technicalities:

I agree that MEMRI should have included a full transcript, not just excerpts, and I wish it was available.

I wonder if the use of the term 'fatwa' was in fact so inaccurate. Let me give, not a translation, but, as is done with the Qur'an, 'the interpretation of the meaning.'

The idea that her opponent didn't know that Dr. Sultan was an ex-Muslim is ludicrous. He must have had some background information given to him, and at the time her main notoriety was her writing on the Muslim Brotherhood on the Annaqed site.

Given that, her response could have meant 'are you making a fatwa, a declaration, that I am an apostate?" The punishment for apostasy in Islam IS death.

To quote IslamQ&A (admittedly, a hyper-conservative interpretation):
66. Make no excuse; you disbelieved after you had believed”

[al-Tawbah 9:65,66]

What you have to do is to remind this slanderer and advise him, and warn him that all his good deeds are to no avail, and that if he does not repent, he will meet Allaah when he is guilty of major kufr.

Tell him that the punishment that he deserves in this world is execution, because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever changes his religion, execute him.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 3017.

So if the Sheik she was opposing did make a fatwa (and I believe he had the theological standing to do so) that she was an apostate, he DID, at least theoretically, condemn her to death.

Certainly she and other 'apostates' HAVE been threatened with death. It was hardly a 'publicity stunt' nor is living your life under police protection that pleasant a way of existing.

Meph,
I'm in if you want a hand with the translation.

A comment

I agree that MEMRI should have included a full transcript, not just excerpts, and I wish it was available.

MEMRI should not have presented a hacked up edit, period.

But then MEMRI's slimey habits are of little surprise.

I wonder if the use of the term 'fatwa' was in fact so inaccurate.

The word has a meaning, insofar as that meaning is not achieved, then using "fatwa" is inaccurate.

The idea that her opponent didn't know that Dr. Sultan was an ex-Muslim is ludicrous. He must have had some background information given to him, and at the time her main notoriety was her writing on the Muslim Brotherhood on the Annaqed site.

Ludricrous?

Why?

He may or may not have been given advance information on those he was debating. I don't know al-Jazeerah practice, it would be rather silly for anyone to presume w/o an idea.

As for the website, well, frankly websites and all that are pretty bloody marginal in the Arab world and I doubt someone of that fellow's profile knows fuck all about such websites. Why should he?

I certainly had never heard of it, and I am of a profile where one might expect I would have.

Given that, her response could have meant 'are you making a fatwa, a declaration, that I am an apostate?" The punishment for apostasy in Islam IS death.

Shrug. Could have, Maybe.....

Certainly she and other 'apostates' HAVE been threatened with death. It was hardly a 'publicity stunt' nor is living your life under police protection that pleasant a way of existing.

No, it isn't, but then publicity seeking and risk seeking are not incompatible or unknown features of human psychology.

The ostentatios references online to her presumed state of being marked for death strike me as overdone, often ill informed and rather confirming the game in question is not about Wafa Sultan, Muslim Reformer, but "find more examples of presumed barbarism of the Enemy."

A step back and a bit more information would be nice.

As for Ms Sultan, eh, she may sell some books in the West but frankly she's an irrelevancy overall.

If we look at the collection of articles on the Annaqed site (English section):

http://www.annaqed.com/english/under/contents.html

we find that this appears to be a Daniel Pipes-supported islamophobic islam-critical site; with no anchoring in the Middle Eastern discourse whatsoever (this is probably better for the Arabic parts, but then I wouldn't know as I can't read Arabic).

I think we can safely assume that the Egyptian professor would not be very interested in that kind of web site (if he even bothers to use a computer ...).

So he was probably not familiar at all with the ideas of Ms. Sultan before going on air.

Ironically enough the ones concerned about death threats supposedly received by Sultan usually refer to the late Rachel Corrie as "St.Pancake." Thats when they're not making death threats of their own.