A fatwa ( Arabic فتوى , DMG fatwa , pl. فتاوى Fatawa ) is one of a Muslim authority granted on request legal advice, which serves the purpose of a religious or legal problem that has arisen among the Muslim believers to clarify. The one who is providing legal information, usually a specialist of Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh ), is as Mufti called, the one who asks for legal advice Mustaftī called. The institution of fatwa is the Islamic counterpart to the Responsa , the legal information halachic authorities in Judaism, dar.
The word fatwa is in Arabic male sex and is usually in the German scientific literature as neuter treated. However, to be found in some publications also use as feminine .
The sphere of influence of the respective fatwa is based on the personal authority of its author, which means that - unlike in the court ruling - the view expressed in the fatwa legal opinion only binding on those Muslims is that also recognize this authority. Since the Sunni Islam no clergy knows, there are no generally accepted rules about who a fatwa can be issued and who is not, which is why Islamic scholars complain again and again, to many people it felt called to. For this reason, there is the so-called "Adab al-Mufti-literature", which should specify the obligations of Mufti and Mustafti. Each Islamic school of law ( madhhab ) follows its own legal system, and the Muslims belong to each different law schools. Thus, both theoretically and practically different Islamic clerics conflicting or competing fatwas exhibit.
In the Middle Ages, Muslim legal scholars have begun to collect their own legal advice. This fatwa collections provide in addition to the so-called Mutún ("basic texts") and the schurūh ("Comments"), one of the most important genres of Islamic legal literature dar. While in the Mutún and Schurūh the tradition of their own school of law has been passed, were the Fatwa Collections from the early modern period, the actual place of legal education . In them, the Muslim scholars contributed in confrontation with the older literature of their own views before, some strongly moved away from the tradition of their own law school.
In countries with Islamic law before issuing fatwas are usually discussed and decided by the national religious leaders. Often they do not completely independent of the government. In such cases, fatwas are hardly contradictory and have the status of an enforceable law. If two fatwas contradict, is most of the leaders (in whose hands lies civil and religious law) worked out a compromise in order to clarify which of the two should be legally enforceable.
In countries where the Shari'a is not part of the legal system is, devout Muslims are often two competing fatwas faced. In such a case, they tend to follow the leader who represents their religious direction or its opposite decision is most likely them. Thus, for example, would Sunnis usually follow that school of law to which they belong traditionally, the fatwa of a Shiite cleric, however, do not follow.