Why a fatwa is not a law

Every fatwa in this library was written for somebody. There was a person, and that person had a situation, and the situation had details that they gave and details that they did not think to give. What was written back was an answer to that.

The question is half the answer

This is why every entry here is published with its question attached, and why the question is not edited down to a headline. A ruling on whether a particular contract is permissible tells you very little unless you know what the contract said. A ruling that a divorce did or did not take effect tells you nothing at all unless you know exactly what was uttered and in what state.

Strip the question away and what is left looks like legislation. It is not legislation. It is correspondence.

Three things a fatwa is not

• It is not a court judgement. A mufti has no power of enforcement and no way to hear the other side. A qadi hears both parties and rules between them; a mufti answers the one who wrote.
• It is not permanent. Where a ruling rests on custom, on prevailing prices, or on how an institution actually operates, it changes when those change. A ruling on a banking product written in 2010 may simply not describe the product sold in 2026.
• It is not transferable without care. Two situations that sound identical in a WhatsApp forward are routinely different in the one detail that decided the answer.

What to do with a fatwa you have been sent

Read the question first. If the question does not match your situation closely, same facts, same conditions, same place, then what you are holding is useful background and not your answer. Ask your own question. It costs you a message.

And if you are the one forwarding: forward the whole thing, with its question and its date, or do not forward it.