By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net
Everybody loves a bad fatwa. And why not? It fills column space for newpapers; It brings in viewers for Television channels; it plays into the image of Muslims as a backward community for communalists; and it gives activists a chance to reinforce their secular credentials. Never mind that this fatwa will not change the lives of millions of Muslims and text of the fatwa could be not what has been reported or maybe the said fatwa doesn’t even exist.
Fatwa is nothing but a religious opinion from a religious scholar to a question asked by a Muslim on a particular situation that he or she may be facing at the time or might face in future and doesn’t know what should be an appropriate way to act in light of Islamic teachings. A mufti then issues a fatwa or opinion based on his understanding of the question and Islam. Just as different medical doctors will have a difference of opinion regarding a diagnosis and treatment plan, it is common for different muftis to give different opinion for the same question.
Media circus
Frontpage of The Times of India, Delhi Edition, May 11, 2010
At least once every year, on a slow news day, some enterprising journalist finds a fatwa that will fit the stereotype about Muslims being backward or Muslim scholars being ignorant or out of touch with the real world or all of the above reasons, and will publish a news story based on this ‘prized’ fatwa. Let’s take the example of the fatwa issued by Darul Uloom Deoband that is making the round in news cycles this week.
The fatwa in question was issued more than a month ago and one can ask the question, why is there a sudden interest by the media in this particular fatwa? A fatwa that is only a sentence long has had numerous newspaper column space and hours of airtime devoted to it. The media bosses have decided that it is an important fatwa because it has all the right keywords to keep the attention of readers & viewers, and therefore will keep a flow of revenue coming in.
One has to question the motive of the major media regarding the publicizing of a fatwa. There is more to this than meets the eye when the Indian media that is obsessed with breaking news and exclusives these days picks up a fatwa that was issued more than a month ago. Within 24 hours of this news being flashed on NDTV on May 11th, 2010, all major media networks of India had reported it. And every new report had added information that was not even there. Let’s look at the fatwa first.
Question number 21031 ((http://darulifta-deoband.org/viewfatwa.jsp?ID=21031) to Darul Ifta (house of fatwas) of Darul Uloom Deoband asked by someone in India states: “Asalamu-Alikum: Can muslim women in india do Govt. or Pvt. Jobs? Shall their salary be Halal or Haram or Prohibited?” Answer published on April 4th, 2010 simply answers it as: “It is unlawful for Muslim women to do job in government or private institutions where men and women work together and women have to talk with [to] men frankly and without veil.”
Headlines
Now let’s look at some of the headlines of news reports about this fatwa:
Fatwa against working Muslim women: NDTV
Fatwa to working Muslim women: Don’t talk to male colleagues: NDTV
Women’s earnings haram, says Deoband: The Times of India [Print edition]
Deoband fatwa: It’s illegal for women to work, support family: The Times of India [Online]
Don’t talk to male colleagues: Darul Uloom’s fatwa to all working women: DNA
Muslim women can’t work: Deoband: Samay Live
Darul Uloom says Muslim women can’t work in public: India Today
Now, fatwa against working women: Indian Express
Women Working with Men Un-Islamic: Deoband: Outlook
Fatwa against men-women proximity at workplace: Zee News
In case you ever wondered why there isnt a successful supermarket tabloid in India, here is your answer. There is no need for one because major media houses in India do that job very well.
Fatwa-checking
Now let’s look at the fatwa again. It doesn’t talk about a woman’s earnings being haram or unlawful, Islamically speaking. It also not talking about whether women can work or not, rather it is a learned scholar giving his opinion that Islamically it will be unlawful for a Muslim women only if she is in a job that will require her to speak to men “frankly and without veil.” I am not sure what mufti sahib meant with the “speaking frankly” phrase, but there is no ruling saying women cannot work or that their earning is haram. This did not stop media houses from publishing news report after news report with sensational headlines that had nothing to do the with the original fatwa.
A simple fact-checking, if Indian media had that system, would have clarified the matter and this fatwa would have remained a non-news. However, this was not to be. Why should anyone bother with minor annoyance when there are pages and airtime to be filled without impunity.
Television channels went a step further and dug up old fatwas dating back to 2005 and 2006 to run on the screens when they were talking about this issue. It is anyone’s guess what issues those fatwas displayed on-screen would have dealt with. We can’t blame readers and viewers when they see a conspiracy in all this.
Tabassum Khan who is an Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside argues that the media jumps on these issues because “It further tatters the already tarnished image of the Muslims.” And when there is not enough facts to go around they simply add fiction to make it sound more interesting.
Fatwas, good or bad, have only limited public appeal and influence. Sadia Khanam, a journalist with The Eastern Post in Kolkata, says, “I don’t encounter many situations where I need to seek the guidance of a fatwa.” And maybe it will sound strange to journalists with a very low image of Muslim women, Khanam adds, “It depends on my personal understanding to decide which fatwa can be held correct and followed.”
And Sadia is not alone in this, Tabassum Khan has done extensive research on the Muslim youth of New Delhi and she says that “The women paid little attention [to fatwas], but among the young men there were a few who gave importance to these fatwas. But they were isolated and few and far in between in numbers.”
So, why are major media houses ready to give up prime space and time for a fatwa that the majority of Muslims pay little attention to? “Mainstream media has no stake in the image of Muslims. They are in the business of enforcing and perpetuating stereotypes. So, if a maulvi works to tatter the already tarnished image, they are the first to give him importance and project his view as the view of the entire community,” explains Khan.
Measured response
Darul Uloom Deoband did the right thing by issuing a denial but the damage had already been done. So how should Muslims respond in situations like these? First of all, those who are activists, community leaders, and commentators, and first lines of contact for these journalists who are seeking them for opinions, need to pay more attention to the story. They need to realize that they don’t need to respond to all media queries. If they do decide to respond, even if it is going to be along predictable lines, they need to see the source of the story. In this case, it would have been to see the original fatwa.
For half an hour, Shazia Ilmi, Sadia Dehlvi, and Kamal Farooqui debated on this topic on Sagarika Ghose’s program “Face The Nation” on CNN-IBN on Wednesday. Strangely, none of them had actually even read the original fatwa. Based on other hearsay news reports, this only served the purpose of keeping untainted the image of Muslims as a monolith community out-of-touch-with-the-modern-world, and women who need to be rescued. Of course, interest of Muslim women is the least of the concerns of the Indian media who are competing for all-important ratings.
One thing is clear that Muslims have no say or control over the media’s actions, but that doesn’t mean that they have to be passive. Polite but firm emails should be sent to reporters and their editors. Muslim community organizations should send a letter on their official letter-heads to the editors and seek meetings with the editorial staff. In these meetings, examples of serious lapses by media when reporting on issues related to Muslims should be brought to their attention.
Media is not a one-way street and they don’t exist in vacuum. In this day and age, readers and viewers have much more power than anyone would like to acknowledge. This power should be used to demand correct and factual coverage. At the same time Muslims need to take these kinds of episodes as opportunity to engage with their non-Muslim colleagues and friends to explain Islam and Muslim practices.
Muslim religious leadership is not above criticism but they need to be engaged to develop a new kind of thinking that takes what Islam has to offer and apply it to the modern world. Religious scholars need to offer solutions to the problems associated with modern life without dragging the whole community to a medieval view of the religion and the world. For this to happen both university-educated and madrasa-educated Muslims need to interact and engage each other.
As Prof. Tabassum Khan rightly states, “It is important for middle-class Muslims to become more vocal and not let uninformed and biased opinions be representative of the community.”
—
A shorter version of this article appeared on The Hoot.