The internet:

The internet is being used as a popular research medium by ordinary Muslims and experts alike (Bunt, 2000). Its growing accessibility enables everyone to get information easily. In the life of Muslims, it has a great significance in terms of online fatawa and discourses about religious life although, depending on whether the source is personalised or depersonalised, it does not necessarily reproduce the close relationships of personal trust on which an imam’s face-to-face advice is typically based.

Interestingly, and reflecting a development of the last decade, all the four mosques featured in this study now have websites that enable communication with their congregations by announcing important events, prayer timetables, and so on.

Additionally, these websites exhibit fatawa in a specific section or in the form of

frequently asked questions (FAQs), as well as providing links to other fatwa websites. This facility enables Muslims, both men and women, to ask questions varying from sexual relations and marriage to women’s menstruation, and so on.

Indeed, a more depersonalised source of advice on certain topics can sometimes be welcome.

Table 2 suggests that some Muslims seek fatawa and resolutions through the internet.

In ‘iMuslims’ Bunt claims that “the extension of Internet-technology access is opening up new markets for specific forms of religious authority, challenging norms”

(2009: 113). However, the internet itself is of course not a source of religious authority, but a medium. In the end, it is from a scholar or mufti that web surfers get the fatawa they seek. Therefore, according to my informants who seek fatawa and religious guidance on the internet, issues such as knowledge pollution and reliable information are extremely important. For example, a young male British-born university student named Fadlullah (a 23-year-old) says, “if you know the website’s reliability, then you look at it, otherwise there are lots of websites and information may confuse you, even you go astray” (interviewed on February 2, 2011).

Furthermore, another young Muslim named Irshad (27), an estate agent attending the LIC, says that:

I think we should only consult a website which we know about, because people claim themselves as Muslims and give rulings on a website, but they are not. ...If I know a website and the ruling is straightforward, I might not speak to a scholar. But, most of the time I consult a religious expert because, you know, the fatawa can differ from people to people depending on their situations (interviewed on 18 April 2011).

Easy access to the internet, especially in Britain, encourages many Muslims to search fatawa online. My informants gave several websites’ names, such as www.al-huda.com, www.askimam.com, www.Sunnipath.com, www.al-islam.com, and www.islamonline.net. The four mosque websites link to some other websites for further research or more information: for instance, the LGM refers to www.e-cfr.org/en/ (the ECFR); the LMM to www.Sunnipath.com; the LIC to www.central-mosque.com; and the IC to www.ukim.org/dawah/askimam.

6.3. Conclusion:

This chapter has investigated the key roles of ‘ulama – both imams and scholars - as religious authorities amongst the Sunni Muslims in four Leeds mosques. In the absence of any sole state or community-based religious authority for all Muslims in Britain, religious authority has become localised and is affirmed by different segments of the community. According to my findings, mosque imams are the frontline and focal point for Muslims, as they are elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Personal familiarity with the imam or sheikh and his knowledge about how fatawa might be applicable to a particular Muslim’s life are key factors in seeking religious advice and acknowledging religious authority.

Those ‘ulama who have proficiency in Islamic law and related sciences manage the process of updating and promoting authoritative interpretations, as in the case of Sheikh al-Judai, whose fatwa on combining two prayers is a crucial attempt to contribute to ‘minority fiqh’ in the context of Britain. As a prototype of reformist

‘ulama, he has important influence among the congregation of LGM. By contrast, as a representative of traditionalist ‘ulama, Sheikh Abdurrahman takes a stand on

advocating that people should follow one of the four mujtahids (Imams Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi’i, and Hanbali) as a religious authority since they reached the peak of knowledge, piety, and sincerity (‘ilm, taqwa, and ikhlas, respectively). The accessibility of ‘ulama through the internet further enables ordinary Muslims to contact famous scholars and ask questions on religious life. Anonymous identity, for example in the form of aliases, offers a kind of confidence and comfort for these ordinary Muslims when asking questions about private and personal matters.

Chapter 7

The meanings and functions of ijtihad, taqlid, and fatwa for Sunni Muslims in Leeds

Since the beginnings of modernity in the Muslim world, ordinary Muslims have begun to raise their voices with the aid of the mass communication and education facilities that “protestant Islam” has shaped in the hands of “non-ulama or lay interpreters” (Robinson, 2009: 349). The intersection of emerging public spheres with processes of reform (Salvatore, 2009: 193) has paved the way for individuals to articulate more opinions about religious beliefs and practices. Furthermore, mass immigration to Europe from Muslim lands has compelled Muslim communities in the Diaspora to tackle issues connected with “the secularization, individualization, and privatization” (Cesari, 2003: 260) of religious life in the process of adaptation to the western environment. As Cesari (2005: 4) has pointed out, the individualisation of Islamic practice is accompanied by a growing distrust of religious authority amongst believers, whether of a particular religious leader or an institution.

However, Chapter 6 has documented the fact that mosque imams and religious experts remain crucially important as religious authorities for Leeds’s Sunni Muslims. Contrary to Cesari’s claim, I can argue that trust in traditional religious authority remains fairly strong in the city, perhaps because of the predominance of Muslims of South Asian heritage (e.g. the Deobandis and Barelwis) who are generally understood to be more conservative and pious than their Middle Eastern counterparts.

In this chapter, I propose to deal with the interrelated notions of ijtihad (independent legal reasoning), taqlid (following a school of law), and fatwa (legal verdict, opinion). In the process of ijtihad, a legal jurist or religious expert (mujtahid) makes efforts to derive rulings from the sources of religion or interpret the sources in changing circumstances, and so produce fatwa. As a result, ordinary Muslims follow (taqlid) the fatawa of religious experts in their religious life. In the British context, both ordinary Muslims and scholars are discussing whether following one of the four Islamic schools of law (taqlid) is necessary or not. The debate over following a particular madhab is very popular. The common Salafi rejectionist approach towards taqlid (Hamid, 2009: 356) is met with strong opposition from traditionalist South Asian religious groups such as the Deobandis (Usmani, 2006: 66) and Barelwis (Ammar, 2001: 74). The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how taqlid is perceived by Sunni Muslims in Leeds. My research unpacks the attitudes of both ordinary Muslims and the ‘ulama, including the mosque imams and religious experts, towards the meaning and functions of ijtihad, taqlid and fatwa in the UK Muslim Diaspora.