An Islamic legal ruling or interpretation issued by a qualified scholar on a question of Islamic law.
From Arabic fatwa, derived from the root f-t-w meaning 'to show the way' or 'to instruct.' The word entered English in the 18th century through contact with Islamic legal traditions, particularly in colonial India and the Middle East.
The fatwa became famous in modern times through the 1989 Salman Rushdie controversy, but Islamic scholars have been issuing these carefully reasoned legal opinions for over a thousand years—it's basically Islamic jurisprudence in action.
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