A chronicle of fatwas: From Rushdie to Rahman

Mumbai-based Raza Academy recently issued a fatwa against musician A R Rahman for being part of the Majid Majidi-directed Iranian movie Muhammad: Messenger of God. According to the academy’s founder, Saeed Mohammed Noori, the movie depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a child which is against Islam. 

The academy has appealed “to all those following Islam to register their protest”. Under the fatwa, it is claimed that the respective marriages of Rahman and Majidi stand revoked. So, they must adopt Islam again and get their marriages solemnised afresh.

Noorie is also reported to be planning to meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to demand a ban on the film in India. 

Responding to the fatwa, Rahman wrote on his Facebook page: “I’m not a scholar of Islam. I follow the middle path and am part traditionalist and part rationalist... I live in the western and eastern worlds and try to love all people for what they are, without judging them.” He added he didn’t direct or produce the movie. “I just did the music. My spiritual experience of working on the film is very personal and I would prefer not to share it.”

Bollywoodhungama.com quoted actress Shabana Azmi as saying: “Firstly, it is important to understand what a fatwa is. It is being bandied about without knowing the facts. A fatwa can be issued only by a mufti, in response to a question raised by a person or a group. The mufti cannot issue a fatwa suo motu; neither can he impose it. A fatwa is purely a recommendation, and not binding.” 

The fatwa against Rahman is another in a long list of those issued against prominent personalities in recent times. One famous case is that of Salman Rushdie, against whom a fatwa was proclaimed in 1989 by Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The subject was Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses and an allegedly blasphemous statement in it (taken from an early biography of Muhammad) regarding the incorporation of pagan goddesses into Islam’s strongly monotheistic structure. In 1998, Iran said it was no longer pursuing Rushdie’s death, but that decree was again reversed in early 2005 by the present theocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Here, is a list of famous personalities against whom fatwas have been issued in recent times:

Taslima Nasreen

Fundamentalists in Bangladesh in 1993 proclaimed a fatwa against Taslima Nasreen. This was for a series of newspaper columns in which she was critical of the treatment of women under Islam. The next year, Nasreen wrote Lajja (Shame), which described the abuse of women and minorities. There again were calls for her death, and her passport was confiscated. 

Sania Mirza

 

In 2005, a fatwa was issued against Mirza by Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui, a leading cleric. The order said Sania Mirza should stop wearing indecent clothes while playing tennis; she should rather wear long tunics and headscarves like those worn by Iranian badminton players.

Salman Khan

In 2008, a fatwa was issued against Salman Khan for allowing Madame Tussaud’s museum in London to make his wax image. In September 2007, Bareilly-based Darul Ifta Manzar-e-Islam issued another fatwa against Khan, for attending a Ganesh puja at Mumbai’s Lalbaugcha Raja Mandal, where singer Sonu Nigam had performed aarti.

Veena Malik

In 2011, a fatwa was issued against Malik, the Pakistani actress who tried her luck in India and gained a fair amount of success, by the All India Muslim Tyohar Committee in Bhopal. This was for signing an agreement to find a husband through a reality show. The show was going to be aired in India.

Shah Rukh Khan

In 2013, a fatwa was issued against the actor for opting to produce a child through a surrogate mother and getting the child’s pre-birth sex determination.