Do you think he had idea of the pain and suffering of the victims in New York City, the Philippines, Nigeria and other places throughout the world where militant Muslims have embraced fear and violence as a means to spread their convictions? In Palenstine and Pakistan the suffering are just as often the victims of Muslims as anyone else. In Afghanistan…who attacked who?
Do some research. In the history of the world’s wars, “religious wars” area a vast minority. However, take a guess which religion has instigated over 75% of those wars…and the pain and suffering of their victims?

I applaud the fatwa for at least defending the honor of the vast number of muslims in the world who agree with it. The radicals have misrepresented them way too long. Maybe this will be the start of “retaking” Islam from the extremist.

“The embodiment of Sunnah” is yet another self donned title of the Sheikul Islam. What next? “embodiment of Quran”?! Saint?! “embodiment of Light”?!

Seems he had no idea of the pain and suffering of the victims in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, N.W. Pakistan, Kashmir.

Abdullah from Kashmir

May Allah bless you with modesty and sincerity.

I fully agree. However, I think journalists should ask themselves if their audiences have absorbed an accurate picture of reality through these ‘micro-reports’, and if not, adjust accordingly, at least in selecting which stories to report on. For example, an amazing number of educated people still seem to be totally unaware that many major Muslims leaders have loudly condemned terrorism. That’s clearly due to a lack of prominent reportage, so this should factor in when deciding whether to report on a fatwas that may not seem so prominent.

” ul-Qadri sound like the most influential Muslim scholar around and the first to come out with such a statement.”
Yes, Reuters got the balance right in this case. His supporters do tend to use off-putting, overblown language, yet he’s not an inconsequential fellow.

“On the Sufi angle, this is another one where brevity trumped background. Since most Sufis are Sunni but not all Sunnis are Sufis, we opted for just Sufi.”

This is problematic because:
(a) the ‘Who’ question is key in this sort of story; precision is necessary to gauge its importance and not enough has been provided. People must know which area of Islamdom his words carry weight in and this is determined by the prevalence of his school of thought, his reputation within it, and the geographical dispersion of the people who take him seriously.

(b) this confuses schools of jurisprudence with spiritual/psychological practice, two very different things.
When someone issues a fatwa, the school of law (‘Hanafi’ in this case) is what’s important. There are 8 schools identified in the Amman Message; these are the categories that all fatwas should be identified with as a matter of journalistic due diligence.

For a Muslim audience, I would have described him simply as a “Hanafi scholar” or, for a South Asian audeince, as a “Barelwi”. (All of the traditional schools are linked with sufi practice, so there’d be no need to mention it.) For a predominantly non-Muslim audience, I would have described him primarily as a “Sunni (Hanafi) scholar” and made mention of his sufi-friendliness in passing somewhere in the article.

“someone to put a decent list out on Wikipedia to make it available to a wider audience”
Personally, I’m surprised that it hasn’t been done yet, given how central it is to the questions that everyone asks about Islam and terrorism. Who do you think is the right ‘someone’? Muslim structures thus far seem too decentralized / uncoordinated to produce such a resource, though the efforts associated with Prince Ghazi are promising if not-quite-there yet. (Even if a Muslim think-tank did get its act together, there’s a risk that the list might not be seen as an objective compilation.) The academic efforts thus far are underwhelming. And I don’t think amateurs can produce such a list, not without the journalists providing the basic information as just described: reporting more widely on fatwas and providing specifics on the actors and their backgrounds. Given that it’s mainly a matter of compilation rather than analysis, I think it’s not necessarily outside the purview of journalism.

Our main concern with this story was to present the fatwa but avoid the hype, which almost made ul-Qadri sound like the most influential Muslim scholar around and the first to come out with such a statement.

On the Sufi angle, this is another one where brevity trumped background. Since most Sufis are Sunni but not all Sunnis are Sufis, we opted for just Sufi.

Thanks for the lists of fatwas and reactions. It’s interesting to see there are several out there, but disappointing to see how badly they’re presented. I second your plea for someone to put a decent list out on Wikipedia to make it available to a wider audience.