NEW DELHI, 18 September 2006 — In a sting-operation that bites at the very foundation of an already aggrieved Indian Muslim community, secret footage of 10 Muftis (Islamic religious leaders), mainly from Uttar Pradesh, have been shown on a news channel apparently “taking money” to issue fatwas in accordance with people’s wishes.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Star News, in association with www.cobrapost.com, broadcasted an investigative show entitled “Benaqaab” on the world of supposedly made-to-order fatwas. The investigation claims to have discovered that fatwas or Islamic legal rulings cannot only be easily bought but made-to-order according to a person’s needs.
With an aim of highlighting “corruption,” the “Benaqaab” team also drew interesting conclusions that muftis representing Islam — a complete way of life – provide their flock with religious rulings on just about all of the topics that affect people in their daily lives. How that could be considered to be corrupt has left many people confused.
The “Benaqaab” investigation, which was carried out for more than two months in north India by a team led by an investigative journalist Jamshed Khan approached muftis through middlemen.
However, according to Shariah experts all of the rulings listed in the journalists’ report can easily “be positioned somewhere on the wide spectrum of differing opinion among scholars on peripheral issues.” Experts say that the claim that these rulings are “made-to-order” and influenced by unscrupulous motives does not hold exactly true.
According to the Star TV report, a fatwa issued by a mufti from Darul-Uloom, Deoband, ruled that using credit cards was forbidden. However, the report failed to mention that this would be the case if the credit card user was to fall behind in his payments and incur interest, which is inherently forbidden in Islam. However, with an aim of mocking religious scholarship, journalists have partially quoted this ruling to belittle India’s leading Islamic seat of learning.
Likewise, a mufti in Hapur pronounced that Muslims acting in movies was un-Islamic, something which is widely accepted by scholars globally. Similarly, makers of the report, without fully understanding Islamic jurisprudence and the nature of Islam allowing the concept of scholars differing on secondary Islamic issues, claimed that a mufti in Meerut issued a fatwa prohibiting Muslims from watching television while another in New Delhi issued a diametrically opposite ruling saying it was fine for Muslims to watch television.
Describing the world of Islamic scholarship to be “murky,” Star News was kind enough to find a shining instance of honesty – where Mufti Zaifiruddin of Darul-Uloom, Deoband, refused any money for issuing a fatwa.
On the issue of whether “bribes” were taken to issue fatwas, Ghulam Muhammed, who is associated with the Bombay-based think-tank Idraak, described the activities of the journalists as a “preempting exercise.” He said, “Rewarding the mufti with a gift of cash as a gesture of appreciation and capturing the whole sequence on secret web camera and presenting it to millions of viewers as a bribe to the mufti, who clearly handled the cash and placed it in his pouch, is the grossest misrepresentation of fact and manifestly a crime of defamation.”
Muhammed, who watched the program on Indian television, added that the camera “blurs the conversation” and so the Muftis “cannot be accused of taking a bribe to give a wrong fatwa.”
“Since no illegal tampering of fatwa was involved, Star TV’s campaign to project the mufti as corrupt and taking a bribe for a “wrong” fatwa falls flat and the whole exercise could have legal implications for STAR TV,” he said.
Meanwhile, a leading Islamic scholar from the UK said, “To prove impropriety the program has to establish that the fatwa issued for alleged payment contradicts the Mufti’s prior verdicts on the same issue, the Mufti refused to issue such a fatwa unless being paid and that the fatwa issued violates the boundaries of all known legal opinion on the spectrum.”
Among the “discoveries” made by the Star TV team were rulings that ‘family planning for Muslims is un-Islamic,’ that ‘Muslim women playing sports should cover their whole body,’ that the ‘use of mobile phones with cameras’ was wrong and that ‘Muslim girls cannot marry or be friends with non-Muslim men.’
Star News is owned by News Corp — the company owned by the pro-Israeli media baron Rupert Murdoch.
