Although women learned in Islamic law have been
giving unofficial religious advice, essentially fatwas,
through the ages, there is still no official sanction
for a woman mufti. In 1999, Dr. Su≠àd Íalà™, head
of the department of fiqh (jurisprudence) in the fac-
ulty of Islamic and Arabic studies for girls at al-
Azhar University, approached Grand Mufti Naßr
Farìd Wàßil offering to serve as his assistant, with-
out salary, and be responsible for fatwas solely on
women’s affairs. She pointed out that there was
nothing in the Qur±àn or ™adìthto suggest that this
would be contrary to Islam, yet she never received
a response from him.
A relatively new development that may open up
possibilities for women to offer fatwas is the world
of cyber-fatwas. While, traditionally, a private indi-
vidual in need of religious advice would travel as
far as necessary to pose his question in person to an
appropriately qualified and respected mufti, today
Muslims throughout the world can send their
queries across cyberspace with the click of a mouse.
There are advantages and disadvantages to the phe-
nomenon. The greatest advantages perhaps are
that, first, individuals who would be hesitant or for
any reason unable to travel to a “live” mufti can
seek information as long as he or she has access to
the Internet (a fairly small group of course); second,
individuals can pose questions about intimate mat-
ters that they would be loathe to broach in person.
The disadvantages are that it is not possible to ver-
ify the qualifications of the mufti or the authentic-
ity of the information he or she provides; moreover,
given the global nature of the web, it is unlikely that
the mufti has solid knowledge of the local context
within which the mustaftì, the person posing the
question, operates. One solution seen in Egypt
today are the Egyptian tele-evangelists, websites,
and “dial-a-fatwa” hotlines; these represent mod-
ern alternatives to the traditional muftis yet are suf-
ficiently locally situated that they can draw on both
their knowledge of local practices and religious
texts when preparing a fatwa.egypt
Significant early twentieth-century Egyptian fat-
was regarding women included: permission for
family planning as early as the 1930s; a 1942 sanc-
tion for women to pray in mosques; a 1952 prohi-
bition on women’s suffrage on the grounds that
voting and running for election are rights restricted
to men (though Egyptian women did receive both
rights in 1956). In 1979, Grand Mufti Jàd al-£aqq
≠AlìJàd al-£aqq openly expressed his support for
the so-called Jihàn law; in response to outrage at
the new law on the part of many members of the172 fatwa
Islamic establishment, Jàd al-£aqq issued a long
fatwa arguing that laws making polygamy more
difficult for men and permitting women to leave
their homes without their husbands’ permission
were very much in accordance with Islam. Islamists
responded by declaring him a puppet of the gov-
ernment. Like most countries of the world at the
time, in the midst of the United Nations Decade for
Women, Egypt was under international pressure to
take visible steps to empower the country’s women.
In the mid-1980s, Acting Grand Mufti Mujàhid
and his successor Grand Mufti Shaykh Mu™ammad
¢an†àwìwere both called upon to decide whether
the ™ijàb(women’s dress covering head and entire
body) or the niqàb(™ijàbplus a veil covering the
face and gloves for the hands) was the more appro-
priate dress for Muslim women. Both men issued
similar statements: based on their examination of
the Qur±àn and ™adìth, they declared that the ™ijàb
was the correct dress for Muslim women and the
niqàbwas unnecessary; neither man, however, dis-
cussed any possible disadvantages to wearing the
™ijàb. As Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen points out, the
study of fatwas can be very useful in establishing a
chronology of changing social norms. Given that
the first questions posed about the niqàbdate only
to the mid- to late-1980s, it seems reasonable to
conclude that the face veil and gloves were fairly
recent phenomena then and far from being in com-
mon use.
In June 1988, ¢an†àwìissued a long fatwa in
response to recent controversy over the sex-change
from man to woman of Sayyid ≠Abd Allàh, a med-
ical student at al-Azhar University. The fatwa con-
cluded that it was permissible to perform the
operation in order to reveal hidden male or female
organs and that indeed it was obligatory to do so
when advised by a doctor; but it was not permissi-
ble if the person simply wished to change sex.
The 1994 United Nations Population Conference
was a controversial event for religious groups of all
persuasions. Within the Islamic world, the gov-
ernments of Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Lebanon
refused to attend following critical fatwas by their
countries’ religious authorities. Like the Vatican,
they saw the conference as focused on encouraging
promiscuity and limiting the number of people on
earth despite God’s wishes. The most contentious
issue to arise from the conference, however, was
that of female genital surgery. A CNN broadcast of
an actual female genital surgery at the time of the
conference thrust the issue into Egyptian public dis-
course for the first time. An embarrassed Egyptian
government quickly promised to curb the practice;
although a ban had been in effect since 1959, the