A Fatwā Is a Legal Opinion

A question that naturally arises here concerns the fatwā — as in the case of Salman Rushdie. A fatwā is not a death penalty. It is a legal opinion, and it is not binding either. Technically, by Islamic law, a person can give a legal opinion. One may come to a faqīh, a jurisprudent, and ask: what is the punishment for somebody who curses the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)? And the answer is: death. And then one says: well, Salman Rushdie cursed him. Although that book is — what do they call it in literature? A roman à clef, which is the term for something where a historical or factual thing is hidden within a literary work; that is probably the term, though not for certain.

Anyway, somebody can say: well, he slandered the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him); and Salman Rushdie can say: look, this is a piece of fiction. By Islamic law, what was done was completely unacceptable. You have to take people to trial. You cannot just kill somebody. Muslims are not vigilantes: there is actually a procedure. And apostasy has its own procedure as well.

Rushdie was clearly an example of the difference between the sacred and the prophetic; that is one way of looking at it. The modern West — Norman Mailer actually said during that time: heresy has made us free, long live heresy. There are a lot of people in the West who see heresy as a good thing. And it is interesting, because this gets to the whole idea: heresy in Greek, hairetikos, means to choose for yourself. It is what they call the middle voice in Greek, the verb hairein, which is to choose for oneself. So: I choose my own way. I am not going to choose the way religion tells me, or the way God tells me — I choose my own way. And that is the original meaning of a heretic: somebody who chose their own way, who did not submit.

In the West we certainly have a tradition now, a post-Enlightenment tradition, which is that we do not have to be subservient and submissive to a church, or to some doctrinal authority, some dogma; the individual has a right to choose what he believes, to choose how he wants to worship or how he does not want to worship. So that is very strong in the modern Western tradition, and a lot of it is a reaction to the abuses of the church during the Middle Ages, the burning of heretics and things like that. There was a lot of that that went on.

In the Islamic tradition, traditionally, there are laws of apostasy. They are a lot more difficult to prove, but there is a procedure. One cannot simply condemn somebody as a heretic in Islamic law: they have to be brought to trial, and the intention has to be looked at. So the Rushdie case is one where geopolitics is being used within a religious context.

The Egyptians had a whole different reaction to it — al-Azhar had a different reaction. And here is something about Muslims: Muslims take the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) very seriously. They really do. It is interesting that the Iranians also condemned the Greek author who wrote The Last Temptation of Christ; they condemned him too, as disparaging a prophet. But that did not make the news. So they were consistent across the board: make fun of prophets, and you are asking for trouble from us. That was their idea.

And that holds elsewhere too. There are still laws on the books in England; there are laws in England, but they do not relate to the Islamic religion — they relate to the Christian religion. So technically, in certain countries, in Greece and other places, there are still laws against making fun of prophets, disparaging prophets, things like that.

So a fatwā is just a legal opinion, and it is non-binding. It is non-binding. If Rushdie were in a Muslim country, and he did disparage the Prophet (peace be upon him), then by Islamic law, if he is tried and found to be guilty, the punishment is death. That is the punishment in the case of any prophet — Abraham, Moses, any of the prophets; not just the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). As it is, the Iranians offered a reward and things like that, so he does fear for his life. But personally, one is not going to go out and hunt down Rushdie and things like that. That is not one's business. Islamic law, as it is understood here, is not a vigilante law: one cannot take the law into one's own hands, because that leads to anarchy.

Think about this societally. If a man is with somebody in private, and for some reason he steals all his money and blows him away, and then tells the judge: well, he cursed the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) — that is a good alibi. If one starts thinking about it, it is crazy. You cannot just do that.