School in fatwas-for-cash sting

2006-09-19 20:55

Lucknow - A prominent Islamic school in India said on Tuesday it plans to regulate the issuing of fatwas after a television sting caught clerics issuing religious edicts in return for cash.

"To stop the misuse of edicts we are seriously considering constituting a body that can regulate the issue of fatwas," Maulana Shahid Rehan, a senior official at the school in northern India, told AFP.

"It is really a matter of shame that a few clerics are misusing their power and are issuing fatwas by accepting money ... it was most un-Islamic."

Three clerics, including the chief of the Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband seminary's fatwa department, have been caught up in the undercover sting.

The seminary's vice chancellor, Marghoobur Rehman, said cleric Mufti Habibur Rehman was suspended from the fatwa department on Sunday after the television report, according to a Press Trust of India news agency report.

The vice chancellor said a committee would investigate the matter and, if found guilty, the cleric would be sacked.

Fatwas losing importance

The clerics were shown on television allegedly agreeing to issue fatwas on credit card and camera phones use, acting in films and watching television, in return for money.

Experts in Islamic law said that the haphazard issuing of fatwas had reduced their weight among community members.

"Fatwas are issued on religious matters but the fatwa loses its importance once clerics start issuing it on mundane matters," Jaffaryab Jilani, a member of the powerful All-India Muslim Personal Law Board, told AFP.

The school in Deoband town, northern Uttar Pradesh state, is one of the oldest seminaries in India. It attracts Islamic students and scholars from across the world.

The school reportedly had great influence on the hardline Taliban, Afghanistan's former rulers.

India, with its population of more than one billion, has 13% of the world's Muslims.

- AFP