5 minutes

The digital age and the reality of the fatwa

Dr..

Ahmed bin Abdulaziz Al-Haddad

August 06, 2021

Our age is the age of digital technology, in all the details of life, material, scientific, administrative and others, and the fatwa is part of this life. Because it relates to the details of a Muslim’s life with his Lord, his religion, his worldly affairs, his family, and his society, so he is not free from a legal ruling; obligatory, mandatory, forbidden, hateful, permitted, or man-made judgment; cause, condition, validity or corruption, and this is the scope of the fatwa that God Almighty has entrusted to the people of remembrance, if he is not self-sufficient with his knowledge, so that his work will be according to the guidance of God Almighty, and his life and death will be for God, Lord of the worlds, as his Lord, glory be to Him and His creation, assigned him to that, and there is no punishment Because of his rule and he is quick to calculate, the fatwa institutions and the fatwa men had a great responsibility to keep pace with the times with its data that people live in, in dealing with digital technology, which is the reality of people, so the responsibility of fatwa institutions and men of knowledge rises; God Almighty has enjoined upon scholars to explain His detailed legal rulings to His servants, and He has taken a covenant with them to do so, and what God Most High has enjoined upon peopleTo know, until the scholars are obligated to know and clarify, and the duty of the statement is in every time according to it.

In the first time, people used to come to the mufti by themselves, and perhaps they would take arduous journeys, but today the digital world has made the whole world in one room, in which one lives with his world with the click of a button, so he hears and sees, so the fatwa must be present in this world, To be able to perform the task entrusted to him by our Lord, Glory be to Him, and to assign guardians who govern people’s conditions and their worldly affairs with religion and the upright Sharia.

The Corona epidemic that has plagued the world about two years ago produced a great interaction with digitization, which played its full role in the conduct of life. And with more giving and exertion, until the performance of the fatwa exceeded what it was before the pandemic, and these institutions must continue with this performance and at this pace and more than that, and increase their digital activity with multiple and advanced programs; To allow everyone around the world to hear God’s law, and this is what we did in the Ifta Department of the Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities, as the performance was double what it was in the past, due to the reality of the contemporary digital world. Various communication windows, so inquiries came from all sides, and people benefited a lot, and giving is still the same, and it will develop more and more withSocial media is developing every day, God willing.

The Egyptian Dar Al-Iftaa took the lead in all of this, as it was able to make the best use of digitization, with high efficiency and unlimited expansion, and harnessed its capabilities to benefit people with a solid, original, moderate fatwa. To keep pace with the digital development and use it to serve people in the field of fatwas, “My Mufti” invited the world to attend the conference in which it revealed the many fatwa projects that it provides a service to Islam and Muslims, and came out with many useful recommendations as well, including:

A recommendation to establish a unit dedicated to digital transformation, affiliated with the General Secretariat of the role and fatwa bodies in the world, whose role is to provide technological and digital support to fatwa institutions at all material and human levels, and to continuously improve the mechanisms and electronic programs related to fatwas and fatwas, and follow up on global developments in this regard and benefit from them.

Including his call to all the respondents to take advantage of the electronic fatwa platforms provided by the fatwa institutions as a suitable alternative in light of this pandemic.

He also came out with the Fatwa Cooperation and Integration Document, which is a legal document, which will make the role of fatwas in the world one circle in the service of Islam and Muslims, thanks to cooperation and integration in clarifying the new rulings of jurisprudence, and contemporary issues of jurisprudence that concern the world, especially in the field of combating extremism precious or uncontrolled, to live The Muslim is in the tolerant mode of Islam, and in its spacious affluence, thanks to the guidance of the rabbinic scholars who are specialized in education, and who are dedicated to this task, which is the task of the heirs of the prophets.

We ask God Almighty success and guidance for the most upright way.

«The Chief Mufti, Director of the Ifta Department in Dubai»