Fatwa in the Age of Digital Transformation

An academic work — Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Abouseif, President of the American Imams Academy, PhD in Tafsīr and Qur'anic Sciences (al-Azhar University). May 2026 / Dhū al-Qaʿda 1447 AH. The complete Arabic text and the complete English version are available for download (PDF) via the button above; this is an on-page reading version, completed chapter by chapter.

Author's Introduction

In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds, and peace and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and his companions. To proceed:

The 2026 Moment — What Changed?

In February 2018 I took part in the 15th Imams' Conference of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) in Houston, Texas, with a paper entitled "Fatwa Between the Qualification of the Mufti and the Chaos of Issuing Rulings." At the time, that paper was an answer to a question that pressed itself insistently in its era: who has the right to issue fatwas in the age of satellite channels and the first websites? The paper was peer-reviewed and published, and it attained its purpose in its day.

Then eight years passed — and they were no ordinary years. In 2019–2020 the coronavirus pandemic came and pushed the Muslim world — as it pushed the entire world — forcibly into the digital space: mosques closed, and sermons, lessons, and fatwas moved to screens within a handful of days; what would have taken a decade of natural transformation, the pandemic compressed into weeks. Then short-video platforms exploded: TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels — and the fatwa came to be delivered in thirty seconds, with audio effects, under the pressure of virality, chased by the logic of the algorithm rather than the logic of fiqh. Then — in November 2022 — ChatGPT appeared, and in a single month its users exceeded a hundred million; any questioner could now put his Sharia question to a machine, which would answer him in seconds with a text polished and sound in its phrasing, yet at times corrupt at heart in its content. For the first time in this community's history, the questioner found a non-human mufti.

In the face of these transformations I realized that the 2018 paper — for all its fulfilling of its purpose in its time — was no longer sufficient; the diagnosis I had offered was for the age of satellite channels and major websites, not for the age of short videos and generative AI, and the six proposals with which I closed that paper were for traditional fatwa institutions, not for the complex, interwoven digital systems. From here this new work was born — not a revision of the 2018 paper, but a reconsideration of the whole question in a manner suited to our present moment.

The Philosophy of This Book

This book sets out from a methodological conviction: that the foundational (uṣūlī) heritage we have inherited — in the definition of fatwa, the conditions of the mufti, the ranks of the mujtahids, and the etiquette of issuing fatwas — is still capable of assimilation. It is not that our inherited tools are incapable; rather, they need a re-reading so as to be applied to a reality the early scholars never faced. But assimilation requires ijtihād — that is, the application of these foundations to events their founders never experienced. And the ijtihād required today is not an individual ijtihād as the heritage knew it, but a collective, institutional ijtihād that can encompass the complexity of the matter, its speed, and its spread.

Hence the additions in this book — the definition of "digital chaos," the "composite qualifications of the contemporary mufti," the "contemporary seventh rank (the collective institutional mujtahid)," the "fiqh of digital consequences," and a code for the mufti's use of artificial intelligence — are not a departure from the heritage, but a natural extension of its gradual method in assimilating new events.

The Audience of This Book

I write this book with four kinds of readers in mind: First and nearest: the imams and preachers of mosques in the West, whom people consult daily on events our inherited fiqh never knew — their situation is what drives me to write. Second: the members of fatwa assemblies and bodies, who issue collective fatwas and face the challenge of institutional work in an age of spreading non-institutionalism. Third: researchers and academics in fiqh and Islamic studies. Fourth: specialized university libraries that need a reference placing these issues in their methodological context.

The Structure of the Book — A Map for the Reader

The book is organized into three progressive parts, each feeding into the next:

Part One — Foundation: comprising three foundational chapters that re-read the major concepts of fatwa, the mufti, qualification, and the ranks of ijtihād in a voice that joins the heritage with the contemporary:

• Chapter One: Conceptual foundation — the definition of fatwa and of "chaos" in the heritage, and the diagnosis of "chaos" as a governing framework.
• Chapter Two: The personality of the mufti and "the composite qualifications" — the conditions of legal responsibility, knowledge, and personal character, reconstructed for today's reality.
• Chapter Three: The six ranks of the mujtahids in the heritage, with the proposal of the contemporary seventh rank: the collective institutional mujtahid, and a comparative table of the seven ranks.

Part Two — Transformation: chapters that carry the foundation into the field of digital events:

• Chapter Four: Digital chaos — five transformations (the shift to short video, the rise of the "religious influencer," the economy of virality, interactive fiqh, politicization) and five dimensions of chaos (chaos of source, of phrasing, of context, of reception, of responsibility).
• Chapter Five: Fatwa as digital content — a reading from the angle of digital media ethics, and a proposed code for the ethics of issuing fatwas on platforms.
• Chapter Six: Artificial intelligence — the gravest and newest of transformations, and a code for the mufti's use of AI.
• Chapter Seven: The digital fiqh of minorities — and digital consequences.
• Chapter Eight: From the individual mufti to the collective fatwa system.

Part Three — Construction:

• Chapter Nine: Evaluation and a preamble to the practical construction.
• Chapter Ten: The practical roadmap — ten initiatives distributed across three axes.

This book does not claim to offer the complete answer; rather, it poses the structural shift that fatwa-giving needs in the age of digital transformation, and it offers — for the first time in a juristic book — an ethical framework for digital fatwa and a code for the use of artificial intelligence, so that this may be in the awareness of everyone concerned with issuing fatwas today.

Part One: Foundation

Chapter One: Foundational Concepts in Fatwa, the Mufti, and Eligibility

(This chapter contains the contemporary additions to Chapter One, which merge with the four classical sub-sections drawn from the original preamble.)

A Contemporary Prelude: Why Re-read the Concepts?

Before delving into the definitions of fatwa, mufti, eligibility, and chaos, it is worth a reflective pause: Why re-read these concepts today? Are the definitions of the classical masters not sufficient? The answer is that the definitions themselves remain sufficient. What has changed is the context upon which they descend. The words — fatwa, mufti, mustaftī (questioner) — no longer carry the same social and institutional contents they bore in the eras of al-Qarāfī, al-Shāṭibī, and Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ.

In the era of the early scholars, the mufti was known by name in his city, seated in a specific mosque, consulted by the people of his town face-to-face, and his fatwa traveled within a defined geographic boundary. Today, fatwa issues forth from the lips of "the mufti" — who may not be a mufti at all — in a thirty-second reel, and then travels to millions of listeners across the world within hours. It is cut from its context, recast, and may reach the questioner stripped of its setting, distorted from its intent, or attributed to another.

From this point, the classical definitions transform from a mere linguistic description into a tool for testing the validity of what is today called "fatwa." When we say that fatwa is "informing of God's ruling" (al-Shāṭibī), we invoke this definition today not to define, but to filter: what is and what is not a fatwa, even when its issuers call it one.

Thus this chapter is not a mere compilation of definitions; it is an epistemic covenant between us and the reader: an agreement on what we mean by the words "fatwa" and "mufti" in the pages of this book — so that things do not become confused for either of us. We build the sub-sections on two layers: a classical inherited layer (Sub-sections 1–4, drawn from the original preamble), followed by three contemporary layers: a comparative table that gathers the definitions on a single page; a proposed definition of digital chaos; and a profile of the digital mustaftī — that new entity which lay beyond the imagination of our classical jurists.

Sub-section Five: A Comparative Table of Definitions

We have surveyed in the preceding sub-sections the definitions of fatwa, mufti, mustaftī, eligibility, and chaos in the works of the early scholars. To assist the reader in holding the essence of each in mind, we gather them here:

This table serves two functions: it summons the definitions at a glance, and it foreshadows the book's method — preserving the classical foundation while building atop it a contemporary layer that neither demolishes nor replaces it.

Sub-section Six: A Proposed Definition of Digital Chaos

We addressed in Sub-section Four the definition of chaos as "a disorder in the discharge of functions and duties, or an entanglement between parties for whom no limit is recognized." This classical definition is correct at its root, but it is inadequate to absorb the new shape that chaos has taken in the digital sphere — a fragmentation crossing borders and continents. We propose here a contemporary definition:

Digital chaos in fatwa-issuance: the fragmentation of fatwa authorities and their dispersal across multiple digital actors in isolation from the controls of eligibility, accompanied by the absence of an objective mechanism for distinguishing the qualified from the unqualified in the open sphere.

Let us unpack its components:

(1) "Fragmentation of fatwa authorities": In earlier eras, fatwa authority was centralized — a particular school, a specific imam, an accredited Dār al-Iftāʾ. Today this authority has fragmented into thousands of points: every Facebook page, YouTube channel, TikTok account, and personal blog whose holders claim authority in fatwa. This is not mere plurality but scattered plurality: no unified methodology gathers it, no recognized institution governs it. Here the concept slides from "praiseworthy plurality" into "harmful dispersion."

(2) "Multiple digital actors": The "digital actor" is broader than "mufti." It includes: the traditional mufti who has moved to the platforms; the preacher whose role has broadened to fatwa though he may not be qualified; the religious influencer whom fame reached before knowledge did; the content creator who produces religious content by the logic of follower counts, not eligibility; and, most recently, the Large Language Model (LLM) which answers religious questions on behalf of humans, without intention, aim, or taqwā. Each contributes — knowingly or not — to shaping the religious consciousness of the public.

(3) "In isolation from the controls of eligibility": This is the central knot. In the classical system, eligibility was a precondition; in the digital sphere the relationship has inverted: fame arrives before knowledge, spread precedes qualification, and the public assumes a role that once belonged to scholars — certifying the muftis. This is not a critique of the public but a description of a structural shift: classical "consensus" on a scholar's eligibility formed slowly across decades through the testimony of peers and students; digital "popular consensus" forms in weeks through likes and follows, with no involvement of scholars at all.

(4) "Absent an objective mechanism for distinction": Classical satellite channels had a minimum of institutional oversight; today's algorithm selects whom to expose by the logic of spread, not eligibility. The questioner has no objective tool for distinguishing those worth asking from those who are not — unless he himself learns that tool (Chapter Ten).

Distinguishing classical chaos from digital chaos:

This distinction has juristic consequences: a locally "aberrant" fatwa may die quickly through surrounding scholarly institutions, whereas a digitally aberrant one may persist for years, accumulate its effects, and generate what might be called "parallel jurisprudence" — arising outside accredited institutions and circulated by the public as if it were "the ruling of the Sharia."

Sub-section Seven: The Digital Mustaftī

What most astonishes in the development of digital fatwa is not the transformation of the mufti, but the transformation of the mustaftī. Our classical jurists left us "the etiquettes of the questioner": to choose the most knowledgeable; to be truthful in his inquiry; to abide by the fatwa; not to move from one mufti to another seeking a dispensation. These rested on an implicit assumption: that the mustaftī seeks the ruling in order to act upon it. The contemporary digital mustaftī differs at root from this model:

(1) Speed of reception: The classical mustaftī would ask and wait; the waiting was part of the discipline. The digital mustaftī expects an instantaneous answer — he opens ChatGPT and receives a reply in seconds. This eliminates a deep formative dimension: the waiting for knowledge and the psychological preparation to receive it. The ruling becomes, in his consciousness, like any other piece of information from a search engine — not a trust bearing eschatological consequences.

(2) Fragmentation of the question: Classically the question was posed with its full context (situation, intention, country, disputed details), allowing a fatwa specific to the questioner's state. Today the question fragments: he asks about "the ruling on bank interest" without specifying the bank, the account, the rate, or the purpose; receives a general answer that may not apply; then asks elsewhere about "working at a company that owns a bank," and on a third about "the housing loan in America" — without linking these into a single integrated consultation with a mufti who knows him.

(3) Moving between fatwas (Fatwa Shopping): A contemporary term in the English-language academic literature — the mustaftī posing his question to several authorities and selecting what accords with his desire. Rare in earlier eras, it has become easy, even expected: he leaves the one who said "no" and clings to the one who said "yes." This strips the fatwa of one of its most important functions — education and the reform of the self — and returns it to the function of psychological licensing for what the questioner desires.

(4) The mustaftī as content consumer: The most dangerous transformation. He no longer asks because he wishes to act; he consumes religious content as he consumes any other digital content — for entertainment, curiosity, argument, diversion. The fatwa exits the frame of "practical knowledge" and enters that of "edutainment." Thus many who listen to fatwas on satellite channels and TikTok clips do not intend to apply what they hear; they intend "to be informed." The statement of the scholar and the statement of the attention-seeker are equalized in their eyes, because the aim is not to act but to follow.

(5) The mustaftī as publisher: Finally, the mustaftī is no longer merely a recipient; he has become a publisher. If a fatwa pleases him, he shares it, convinces his friends of it, introduces it into their debates — so the fatwa, however weak its chain, becomes part of the cognitive system of society, circulated as "the ruling of the Sharia" while no one knows whence it came or what its evidence was. He publishes not what he is scholarly convinced of but what aligns with his desire; thus accumulates in digital societies what might be termed "a popular consensus on the false" — born of much circulation, not of scholarly investigation.

Conclusion of the Chapter

What we have presented in the two new sub-sections (Six and Seven) demonstrates that "fatwa," "mufti," and "mustaftī" — in their classical garments — do not encompass the digital reality in its entirety. These concepts require contemporary appendices that complete their structure rather than dismantle it: the foundation remains fixed in the definitions of al-Qarāfī and al-Shāṭibī, while the contemporary addition absorbs digital fragmentation and the new questioner. With this conceptual foundation, the reader is equipped to receive the book's subsequent themes with a single vocabulary — and with a shared awareness that what we propose is not a re-cataloguing of what the early scholars said, but a building above their work to address questions that did not occur to them.

Chapter Two: The Personhood of the Mufti — Between the Conditions of Legal Capacity, Knowledge, and Character

(This chapter contains the contemporary additions to Chapter Two, which merge with the three classical sub-sections drawn from "The Etiquettes of the Mufti.")

A Prelude: From Conditions to Qualifications

In the previous chapter we stood upon the foundational concepts. Now we advance a step: What is the personhood of the mufti? What are his conditions and qualities? Our classical jurists furnished a tight architecture composed of three layers of conditions:

• Conditions of legal capacity (al-shurūṭ al-taklīfiyya): Islam, post-pubescence (bulūgh), and sound intellect — the foundation of every Sharia obligation.
• Conditions of knowledge (al-shurūṭ al-ʿilmiyya): knowledge of the proofs of rulings (Qur'an, Sunna, ijmāʿ, qiyās) and the instrumental sciences (grammar, language, scholarly disagreement).
• Personal qualities (al-ṣifāt al-shakhṣiyya): eight ethical and methodological attributes — equity (al-inṣāf), soundness of mind, integrity of conduct, awareness of context, observance of custom (ʿurf), moderation, absence of partisan attachment, and observance of the higher objectives (maqāṣid).

This triple architecture is sound in itself, and each condition has been written about by the imams in ways that need not be repeated. The goal of this chapter is therefore not to re-instruct in these conditions, but to add to the triple architecture a fourth layer dictated by the nature of our era: the Compound Qualifications of the Contemporary Mufti. The claim we put forward — and it is a sizable claim — is this: the classical triple conditions, though they remain necessary for anyone undertaking fatwa, are no longer sufficient in our age. The mufti who combines them all may today fail in his mission if he is ignorant of new dimensions called for by the nature of fatwa-issuance in the digital sphere.

Sub-section Four (A Substantive Addition): The Compound Qualifications of the Contemporary Mufti

Why "Qualifications" and not "Conditions"? The distinction is deliberate: conditions are what, if lost, void eligibility (the classical three are of this kind); qualifications are what, if lost, diminish competence and weaken performance but do not nullify eligibility. We do not claim that every mufti who lacks these is barred from fatwa; we claim that the mufti of digital space — the one who chooses to practice fatwa across the platforms — is bound by these additional qualifications, just as the judge is bound by additional qualifications beyond those required of the mufti. "Specialization in digital fatwa-issuance" is a new occupation with its own requirements; whoever is not armed with them, better that he leave the platforms to their people.

Qualification One — Media Competence. Definition: awareness of the mechanisms of digital spread, excerpting, and reframing to which a fatwa is subjected after its issuance. Necessity: a fatwa departs from the mufti in a specific formulation and context, but what reaches the public may be a sentence excerpted from its context, a still image pulled from a clip, a strong phrase reinforced by dramatic editing, a hasty editor's summary, or a translation that fails to convey nuance. It requires: understanding that every word will be heard apart from its context and planning for that; avoiding "provocative" phrases easy to excerpt as weapons; structuring the fatwa so that excerpting a portion strips it of meaning; anticipating what editors and influencers will fasten upon; and distinguishing the spoken word from the published word whose full responsibility he carries. In its absence: fatwas coherent at root cause wide harm after being excerpted.

Qualification Two — Psychosocial Awareness. Definition: understanding the psychology of the questioner and the motives of his question, and the social context upon which the answer descends. Necessity: the mustaftī does not always ask in order to act; he may ask to rationalize what he already does, to probe limits in order to avoid them, to register a position in argument, to embarrass or test the mufti, or to consume content. The mufti who always presumes the question "innocent" may issue fatwas correct in theory but harmful in context — this is the school to which Ibn al-Qayyim alluded in "the jurist son of a jurist" who knows for whom he issues a fatwa before he knows what he issues it about. In its absence: the fatwa devolves into a machine of "if/then"; and the young Muslim today does not flee strict fatwas — he flees fatwas that fail to understand his question at all.

Qualification Three — Technological Literacy and Its Limits. Definition: knowledge of the operations of platforms, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, and of the extent to which technology can produce religious content. Necessity: the mufti operates in an environment engineered for non-religious aims (advertising, engagement, screen time); understanding this lets him use the platform rather than be used by it. In 2018 this was secondary; today, with generative AI, it is essential — what can an LLM answer, what can it not, when does it hallucinate, how does it handle religious texts? It requires: a grasp of the logic of algorithms; awareness of the difference between a model that "recalls" texts and one that "predicts" them statistically; awareness of "hallucination"; personal experimentation (it does not suffice to hear about ChatGPT — he must use it to know its limits); and the distinction between "informational assistance," which may be drawn upon, and "substituting for the mufti," which is not permissible. In its absence: fatwas about AI come forth upon a false conception of its nature — either dangerously permissive or unjustifiably restrictive.

Qualification Four — The Jurisprudence of Digital Consequences. Definition: an application of the well-known uṣūlī rule of "considering consequences" (al-naẓar fī al-maʾālāt), to which al-Shāṭibī devoted attention in al-Muwāfaqāt, to the digital sphere. The classical root: fiqh al-maʾālāt means looking into the consequences an action leads to before judging it; were an action outwardly permissible but leading to a preponderant evil, the ruling inverts. Digital application: before voicing a fatwa the mufti must ask — what will happen in an hour, a day, a week? Who will use it, and in what context? A general permissive fatwa may be used to justify what is not in fact permissible for a group; a lenient fatwa may lead to wide behavioral degradation; a strict one may alienate the young from religion; a fatwa may become a "debating weapon" for one faction against another. It requires "consequentialist thinking" and mental simulation (how would a listener, a media editor, a hard-liner, a libertine each use this fatwa?), and readiness to issue intentionally reserved fatwas. In its absence: fatwas correct in themselves generate massive chaos — this is, in the author's estimation, the most neglected qualification in contemporary digital fatwa.

Qualification Five — Media Integrity. Definition: the mufti's responsibility for the manner in which his fatwa is conveyed — even after its issuance — recognizing that all that issues from his mouth may be abridged, transmitted, translated, and distorted. Necessity: in the classical system the mufti's responsibility ended at the moment of issuance; today the line dividing "mufti" from "publisher" has weakened — if he issues a fatwa on his own channel he is the first publisher, and what occurs in excerpted, republished versions carries a portion of his responsibility. It requires: following how the fatwa is transmitted; issuing clarifications when it is distorted; correcting what is wrongly attributed to him on the same platform and with similar reach; training the auxiliary team (editing, marketing, translation); and using "verification" tools such as accredited fatwa banks. In its absence emerges what might be called "the hybrid fatwa" — a fatwa attributed to a scholar but in reality a composite of several mixed fatwas, or an original into which distorting commentary has been merged; this may afflict major scholars, living or dead, with sayings attributed to them they never said.

Conclusion of Sub-section Four: these five qualifications are not intellectual luxuries but practical necessities. They differ in nature from the classical conditions: the classical conditions are personal (one possesses or lacks them), while the contemporary qualifications are personal + acquired + continuous (requiring renewal with every new technical development). The mufti who has withdrawn from the platforms is not bound by them; but whoever chooses to be "present" in the digital sphere has committed himself — knowingly or not — to these additions. Were we to place them as a measure, many of today's celebrated "digital muftis" would step outside the circle — not a slight upon their learning, but a description of their performance in the sphere they chose to lead.

Conclusion of the Chapter

The personhood of the mufti is a layered architecture: a first layer of legal capacity (fixed, unchanging); a second of knowledge (requiring today an expansion into bodies of knowledge unknown to the early scholars); a third, personal (the eight qualities, unchanging in essence yet requiring new applications); and above these the fourth — the Compound Qualifications (Media Competence, Psychosocial Awareness, Technological Literacy, the Jurisprudence of Digital Consequences, and Media Integrity). Not a replacement of what came before, but its completion. The cognitive system built in the first three chapters — Foundational Concepts, the Personhood of the Mufti, and the Ranks of the Mujtahids — represents our shared vocabulary for what follows.

Chapter Three: The Ranks of the Mujtahids and the Limits of Issuing Fatwa Through Taqlīd

A Prelude: Why a Standalone Chapter?

In the original 2018 paper presented to AMJA, the discussion of "the ranks of the mujtahids" appeared within a long footnote (number 26) that extended across three pages and broke the flow of reading. One feature of this book is that it extracts that valuable content from the shadow of the footnote into the light of a standalone chapter, and adds to it a contemporary layer indispensable to it: the Contemporary Seventh Rank — the Collective Institutional Mujtahid — a model unknown to the early scholars but called forth by the compounded complexity of contemporary contingencies and the inability of any single individual, however high his aspiration, to encompass them all. The chapter has four sub-sections: defining ijtihād; the six classical ranks; the contemporary seventh rank; and a comparative table.

Sub-section One: Defining Ijtihād

Linguistically, ijtihād derives from the root j-h-d: the exertion of effort and the maximal expending of capacity in some difficult matter, whether sensible (walking, labor) or immaterial (extracting a ruling). Technically, the uṣūlīs' phrasings differed while sharing one meaning. The author surveys eight definitions: (1) al-Shāṭibī: "the exertion of effort in attaining knowledge or probability concerning a ruling"; (2) al-Rāzī: "the exertion of effort in inquiry into that for which no blame attaches, while having exerted maximal effort"; (3) al-Qarāfī: "the exertion of effort in inquiry into that for which religious blame attaches"; (4) al-Āmidī: "the exertion of effort in seeking probability concerning some religious rulings, such that one senses inability for more"; (5) Ibn al-Ḥājib: "the jurist's exertion of effort to attain probability concerning a religious ruling"; (6) Ibn Mufliḥ: "the jurist's exertion of his capacity to grasp the religious ruling"; (7) Ibn al-Subkī: "the jurist's exertion of effort to attain probability concerning a ruling"; (8) Ibn Juzayy: "the exertion of effort in inquiry into the religious rulings."

The chosen definition (reconciling them): Ijtihād is the exertion of effort in inquiry, and the attainment of knowledge or probability concerning some of the religious rulings, in such a way that no religious blame attaches to him and he does not sense an inability in himself.

Sub-section Two: The Six Ranks of the Mujtahids

The uṣūlīs agreed that the mujtahids are graded ranks by degree of independence and scope. The author adopts the six-fold classification as the most balanced:

(1) The Independent Mujtahid (al-Muṭlaq): "independent in his rules for himself, building upon them the fiqh apart from the established rules of the school" (al-Suyūṭī); requiring knowledge of the Book, Sunna, and the sayings of the Companions, the principles of jurisprudence and the instrumental sciences in their fullest measure, with mastery of language and the places of consensus and divergence — not an imitator of another. This is the highest rank, that of the Four Imams; the majority hold it nearly extinct today, "as rare as red sulfur."

(2) The Affiliated Independent Mujtahid (al-Muntasib): attributed to an imam because he trod that imam's path in ijtihād — not imitating him in school or proof, but having found his path the soundest — as Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan with Abū Ḥanīfa, though they differed from him in many particulars.

(3) The Mujtahid Within the School: knows fiqh, its principles, and the proofs in detail, yet imitates his imam in what is manifest in his text. Ibn al-Qayyim criticized this rank sharply: "how did their ijtihād bring them to the conclusion that their imam is the most knowledgeable… while it did not bring them to look into the speech of God and His Messenger ﷺ?" And Ibn Rushd refused making "what is not a principle into a principle to be analogized upon… sufficient is this as misguidance and innovation."

(4) The Mujtahid of Weighing and Fatwa (al-Tarjīḥ wa al-Futyā): deeply learned within his imam's school, capable of weighing one statement against another; by these the needs of people across the ages were met.

(5) The Stratum of Imitators Capable of Discrimination: able to distinguish the strong from the weak within the school — like the writers of the established texts among the later scholars.

(6) The Mujtahid in a Particular Issue (al-juzʾī): has reached the rank of ijtihād in a specific issue, chapter, or discipline while ignorant of what lies outside it. This rank may well suit our age of specialized, deepened sciences, in which it is impractical for one individual to encompass all chapters of fiqh.

Sub-section Three (New): The Contemporary Seventh Rank — The Collective Institutional Mujtahid

The classical six-fold classification was crafted in an era whose contingencies arose slowly, were locally confined, and could be encompassed by a single jurist. Today's nawāzil are composite, transcend borders, call for multiple specializations (medicine, economics, computing, psychology, international law), and arise faster than the individual can track. Hence the need for the Seventh Rank.

Definition: The Collective Institutional Mujtahid: an organized collective entity, in which a number of mujtahids and specialists gather, within a recognized institutional framework, to issue religious resolutions in matters of public consequence, according to an established methodology and through a collective published output.

Its foundational roots are firm in the heritage: the shūrā commanded by the Qur'an ("And their affair is by consultation among themselves"; "And consult them in the matter"); the shūrā council ʿUmar established to choose the caliph; ʿUmar's consulting the senior Companions on the conquests and the apportionment of lands; the Prophet's ﷺ gathering his Companions for counsel at Badr, Uḥud, and the Trench; and the councils of scholars in Madīna, Kūfa, and Baṣra. Contemporary jurists such as al-Qaraḍāwī and al-Zuḥaylī judged it a recognized foundation fit for activation today.

Contemporary models are of three types: (1) the major international fiqh academies (the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of the OIC, the European Council for Fatwa and Research, the Muslim World League); (2) the regional and national fiqh bodies (AMJA — to which this book's original paper was presented; the Fatwa Committee of the Egyptian Dār al-Iftāʾ; the Saudi Permanent Committee; the Kuwaiti Diwān al-Iftāʾ; the Jordanian Iftāʾ Department); and (3) multidisciplinary fatwa teams that gather the mufti with a physician, economist, and technologist for severely composite contingencies (embryonic genetic editing, complex Islamic finance, blockchain transactions) — an emerging form advancing rapidly.

Differences between individual and collective ijtihād:

Conditions of legitimacy for collective ijtihād: (1) eligibility in the members, each qualified within his specialty — otherwise the academy becomes "a formal assembly without spirit"; (2) an established, documented methodology (how an issue is presented, how opinion is gathered, the quorum, the treatment and publication of the minority's views); (3) financial and political independence — "whenever it is mortgaged to a funder or political body, it loses its scholarly credibility"; (4) publication and transparency (resolutions published with their proofs); (5) a mechanism of revision when a resolution is shown to be in error.

When is collective ijtihād the most fitting? Not every issue requires it — daily and personal contingencies and instructive fatwas suit the empowered individual mufti. It is required for: contingencies of wide impact (cryptocurrencies, vaccines in pandemics, in-vitro reproduction); composite contingencies (genetic editing, complex finance, advanced medical technologies); critical disputed issues needing a decisive, unifying opinion (the start of Ramadan, working in mixed environments); and new questions the early jurists never investigated (virtual reality, artificial intelligence, complex digital transactions).

Challenges named in honesty: slow output (annual conferences cannot keep pace); limited reach (resolutions reach specialists, not the public who consume fatwa via social media); weak coordination among academies (producing contradictory global fatwas); and funding and independence. These do not negate the rank but call for developing its mechanisms — the task of Chapter Eight and Chapter Ten.

Sub-section Four (New): A Comparative Table of the Seven Ranks

★ The Seventh Rank is the proposed contemporary addition of this book — not a substitute for the six ranks but a completion of them: the fiqh academy is composed of individuals each belonging to one of the preceding ranks, but the integration among them produces a level of ijtihād the individual cannot achieve alone.

Conclusion of the Chapter

The ranks of the mujtahids are not a fixed structure ending with the six set down by the uṣūlīs, but a living structure responsive to the needs of every age. The early scholars encompassed the ranks of the individual; our age needs a seventh that accommodates the collective and the institution. This is no rebellion against the heritage but an expansion of it — built upon the very principles by which the imams classified the ranks, only within a collective frame in which competencies cooperate.

Part Two: Transformation

Chapter Four: The Chaos of Fatwa — A Contemporary Reading (2018 → 2026)

A Prelude: Two Readings of a Single Chaos

In the original 2018 paper we devoted a chapter to "The Chaos of Fatwa: Between the Classical and the Contemporary," surveying the early scholars' dread of issuing fatwa, the words of imams such as Ibn al-Qayyim on the gravity of issuing fatwa without knowledge, and the problem then taking shape on satellite channels. That chapter remains sound. But what has occurred between 2018 and 2026 cannot be encompassed by what we wrote then; it deserves a new chapter offering a contemporary reading — not because the chaos changed in its essence, but because it has taken on new shapes our classical jurists could never have envisioned, and that we ourselves, eight years ago, could not predict. This chapter recalls what the early scholars and our 2018 paper said; describes five major transformations between 2018 and 2026; and dissects five structural dimensions of the new digital chaos.

Sub-section One: What Remains from the Original

The early scholars' dread of fatwa — five reports: al-Barāʾ b. ʿĀzib: "I saw three hundred of the people of Badr, every one of whom would love that his companion suffice him in the matter of fatwa"; Ibn Abī Laylā: "I encountered one hundred and twenty of the Anṣār… one would be asked about a matter and refer it to another, until it returned to the first"; Abū Ḥanīfa: "Were it not for the awe of God that knowledge be lost, I would never have issued fatwa — they take the pleasantness and I the burden"; Sufyān al-Thawrī: "We encountered the jurists, and they would hate to answer in fatwa until they could find no escape"; Imam Aḥmad: "Whoever exposes himself to issuing fatwa has exposed himself to a grave matter." These indicate not fear but reverence — the restraint of the magnifier, not the trepidation of the ignorant.

Ibn al-Qayyim (in Iʿlām al-Muwaqqiʿīn): "It is not permissible for the mufti to bear witness against God and His Messenger that this was declared permissible, or forbidden, or obligatory, or disliked, except for what he knows to be such"; and the warning: "Let each beware lest he say 'God declared this permissible' or 'God forbade this,' and God say to him: You have lied." A warning made when fatwa took a day or a week acquires a more urgent dimension today: what will God say to one who issued a fatwa in a thirty-second reel, attributing to Islam what is not of it? The satellite-channel problem we raised in 2018 has today become the smallest problem, for what came after has produced deeper dangers.

Sub-section Two: Five Transformations Between 2018 and 2026

One — The shift of the center from satellite channels to short-form video. In 2018 the channels were the stage; the fatwa took minutes, with structure and dialogue. Between 2019–2022 came the short-video explosion (TikTok, Shorts, Reels); the fatwa expected to take thirty seconds. This produced: a killing simplification (the composite fatwa cannot be reduced to thirty seconds without losing the essence of fiqh — details, exceptions, context, objectives collapse); the erasure of dialogue (the questioner becomes a passive recipient); the rise of visual capture (the provocative spreads more than the beneficial); and the disappearance of stillness (no place for reflection, a foundational principle).

Two — The rise of the "religious influencer" as an actor separate from the scholarly institution. Classically the mufti emerged from the institution (university, Dār al-Iftāʾ, school), certified by teachers and peers. In the new model (shaped after 2020) he arises from the digital sphere itself: a page, a channel, an audience — the public certifies him, fame is the license, not chains of transmission. He chooses topics by what spreads, frames speech by the logic of content not fiqh, offers "opinion" received as "ruling," and moves with no institution to review or correct him. The result: hundreds of thousands of new muftis, none subject to a professional framework, none bearing responsibility for error, none encountering one to say "No."

Three — The collapse of traditional fatwa authority before the attention economy. Classically authority flowed from knowledge, certification, and institutional recognition; now from a single source — spread. This generates the scholar without an audience (acknowledged yet without influence), the influencer without knowledge (untrained yet with millions of followers and enormous influence), the attention economy (the fatwa a product competing for attention), and the algorithm as the engine of authority. The most dangerous result: the dissolution of "the scholars" as a class possessing authority — now mere "religious actors" competing for influence.

Four — The culture of religious trending. Classically topics were chosen by the logic of need; now by the logic of the trend. Hence the "trending fatwa": issues amenable to attractive controversy spread, while foundational fiqh (prayer, zakāt, etiquette) receives less attention than provocative fiqh (sex, politics, music, inter-school disputes). The audience receives a distorted picture of religion as a set of polemical debates rather than a complete educational system, and "interactive jurisprudence" (built on argument and provocation) arises in place of "foundational jurisprudence" (built on learning and formation).

Five — The conversion of certain fatwas into tools of political and ideological mobilization. Some fatwas no longer emerge from a pure jurisprudential method but become weapons in a political or ideological battle: supporting one authority against another regardless of the truth; targeting a competing Islamic current to suppress rather than reform; serving an ideological historical narrative; or used to declare opponents unbelievers, sinners, or innovators. Classical jurists warned of "issuing fatwa by whim" — then personal; today whim assumes a collective form (of the current, the group, the authority). This is the most dangerous transformation and the hardest to remedy, for it pertains not to mechanisms but to the intentions of actors.

Sub-section Three: Dissecting the New Digital Chaos — Five Dimensions

One — Chaos of source (who issues the fatwa?). The answer has fragmented: an eminent scholar; a shaykh with popular support but without others' acknowledgment of eligibility; a preacher from an exhortatory background untrained in fiqh; an influencer without religious credentials; an ordinary person in comment sections; or a robot (an LLM) answering without comprehension or intention. The mustaftī often cannot identify the source of the answer that reaches him.

Two — Chaos of formulation (how is the fatwa reduced to thirty seconds?). The original layered structure (introduction, depiction, argument, consideration of circumstances, exceptions, conclusion) cannot fit the short video, so the fatwa is reduced to a brief title, a single sentence stripped of conditions, absent argument, and misleading visual framing — so a single issue may appear as "absolute prohibition" in one clip and "absolute permissibility" in another, both attributed to the same scholar.

Three — Chaos of context (excerpting and repurposing). The most dangerous and widespread. A fatwa issued for a particular questioner, time, and circumstance is plucked from its context and returned to the public sphere as a general ruling, applied to cases the mufti did not intend, used in battles he was no party to, and attributed to him in a context that harms him without his knowledge. How many a sound fatwa has been turned into an instrument of sedition by one who excerpted it!

Four — Chaos of reception (choosing the fatwa that pleases). Deepening "Fatwa Shopping": in the digital sphere the mustaftī poses his question to dozens of parties and selects what accords with his desire — or merely searches for "the ruling on such-and-such," receives dozens of videos, and selects the one that says "yes." The relationship inverts: he consults the market, and the fatwa "shops itself on offer." Its cure requires educating the mustaftī (Chapter Ten, Initiative Seven).

Five — Chaos of accountability (who is held responsible if the digital mufti errs?). The most legally and ethically urgent. Responsibility fragments: who issued it (perhaps anonymous, in another country); who published it (a re-sharing account claiming no responsibility); the platform (which disclaims responsibility for user content); and the algorithm (promoting content without human intervention, outside ethical accountability). If an anonymous figure issues an aberrant fatwa that spreads through millions of views, who bears the burden of this misguidance? A fundamental question yet unresolved — raised here so it may be present in consciousness.

Conclusion of the Chapter

The chaos of which we speak is not a passing phenomenon but the expression of a structural transformation in the relationship between the human being and religious knowledge; left unaddressed, its damages will accumulate for decades. The five transformations (short-form video, the religious influencer, the attention economy, interactive jurisprudence, politicization) overlap and reinforce one another, and the five dimensions of chaos (source, formulation, context, reception, accountability) all arise from them.

Chapter Five: Fatwa as Digital Content — The Ethics of Platforms

A Prelude: From Diagnosis to Ethical Framework

Chapter Four diagnosed digital chaos; but the exposure of dysfunction does not produce its alternative, and description does not stand in for the norm. This chapter shifts the question from "What is the chaos?" to "What ethical framework should govern fatwa on the platforms?" — which presupposes that digital fatwa is not merely an extension of classical fatwa but a new kind of activity with its own structure and ethical demands. To build this framework we must shift, in our consciousness, from viewing the mufti as "a scholar answering a question" to viewing him as "a creator of religious content in a space governed by algorithms." This is not surrender to reality but acknowledgment of it in order to engage it — for whoever denies reality does not reform it.

Sub-section One: The Mufti as Content Creator

When the mufti enters the digital sphere he enters a new system competing for attention against millions of producers, which imposes four pressures:

(1) The pressure of brevity — classical fiqh is a layered architecture (depiction of the act, its characterization, its proof, exceptions, balancing of evidences, conclusion) that takes time; short video cannot bear it, so the mufti either abridges into sixty seconds (losing essential detail) or elaborates (losing the audience). Many choose the first unawares, and "a decade of fiqh investigation is reduced to 'such-and-such is permissible/forbidden.'" This is not mere neglect of detail but a structural disfigurement of fiqh, whose core revolves around distinctions, conditions, and exceptions.

(2) The search for spread — in the digital model the metrics of spread enter: the mufti sees which topics spread and which die, and his taste shapes accordingly. Provocative topics (sex, music, sectarian disputes, takfīr, politics) take the lion's share, while foundational fiqh (purity, prayer, zakāt, purification of the soul) receives far less — not necessarily by intent, but because the algorithm, the audience, and the platform all reward provocation.

(3) The influencer economy — platforms let content above certain thresholds earn advertising money, producing "Fatwa as Business." The ethical problem is compound: conflict of interest (a financial stake in fatwas that spread), revenue pressure (avoiding "unprofitable" though important topics), and the possible influence of a funding partner. The solution is not to abstain from lawful earning, but: complete transparency about funding, a clear separation between fatwa and entertainment content, and readiness to sacrifice followers if the truth so requires.

(4) The audience that shapes the content — an "instant feedback loop" (comments, likes, views) gradually teaches the mufti that lenient fatwas earn more than strict ones, that fatwas agreeing with the followership are welcomed and those disagreeing are attacked, and that the followership becomes a cohort he loses if he contradicts their expectations. So he slides — without sensing it — from "a mufti who shapes his content" to "a mufti who responds to his audience's expectations": a dangerous inversion, for truth is not determined by the audience.

Sub-section Two: The Hegemony of Algorithms

Between the mufti and the mustaftī stands a new intermediary unknown to the classical model: the algorithm — not neutral, but built on a commercial logic of prolonging the user's time. (1) The algorithm as a new intermediary: the path is now "the mustaftī opens YouTube → the algorithm selects videos → he chooses among them → he arrives at the fatwa"; what he sees is not "the Islamic ruling" but "the fatwa the algorithm chose to display based on its data about him." The algorithm does not know truth from falsehood and does not care; all it cares about is what keeps the user longer. (2) Trend bias: it deals with content by "signals" (speed of early engagement, watch-through rate, comments, shares), not by quality — a structural bias favoring provocative over correct content, so aberrant fatwas may spread more than sound ones. (3) Religious filter bubbles: the algorithm shows each user what conforms to his orientation — the strict shown stricter fatwas, the libertine shown lenient ones, the doubter shown content deepening his doubt, the partisan shown his own school — so the Muslim public fragments into parallel bubbles that meet only in media battles.

Sub-section Three: A Proposed Ethical Code for Digital Fatwa

Six principles — not a legal regulation, but a self-imposed code observed from within, in fidelity to the trust of knowledge:

(1) The responsibility of the published word — everything published remains (even if deleted, it survives with downloaders and sharers); this imposes a deeper verbal responsibility: verifying information before publication, reflecting on formulation so it admits only the intended meaning, bearing the long-term consequences, and not publishing in moments of anger.

(2) The integrity of the title (against religious clickbait) — titles like "A ruling no scholar has stated until now!" or "You will not believe what the imam said" are an ethical defect that exploits provocation and frames the matter misleadingly. The title must summarize the content with integrity, neither denying nor exaggerating.

(3) Respect for context — some issues (the Muslim's treatment of the non-Muslim in the West, marriage across religions, mixed-gender employment, dealing with AI) do not admit simplification; reducing them to "permitted/forbidden" violates the logic of fiqh. The mufti must either address such issues with the attention they deserve or abstain — not issue fatwa on major issues in "a single saying."

(4) Disclosure of funding and interest — what is required of the journalist is more so required of the mufti: if his channel is funded by a particular entity, or he has an interest in the matter, he must disclose it. Disclosure does not invalidate the relationship but lets the audience judge whether it affects the fatwa.

(5) Avoidance of incitement and emotional manipulation — digital media rewards emotional content; the mufti may slide into dramatic music, "battle" titles between scholars, the language of revenge, or emotionally charged imagery. Emotions have a place in the sermon and remembrance, but their place in fatwa is limited: the fatwa calls upon intellect and reflection, not provocation.

(6) The mufti's responsibility for "excerpted versions" — the most neglected principle: the one who repurposes bears clear sin, but the original mufti is partly responsible if he knew his speech would be excerpted and took no precaution, or could correct after excerpting and did not. His responsibility is ongoing — it does not end at issuance but continues in following how his fatwa is conveyed and intervening to correct distortion (part of the "media integrity" of Chapter Two).

Sub-section Four: Patterns from Reality (Case Studies)

Three failure patterns, without naming individuals: (1) "The viral fatwa" — an aberrant fatwa contradicting the recognized consensus is seized upon because it is "new" and "provocative," spreads widely, and its refutation only feeds it; its size becomes multiples greater than its juridical weight, and it is treated not by direct refutation alone but by enriching balanced alternative content. (2) "The influencer without an institution" — a figure with millions of followers presenting religious content without accredited training, treated by the audience as a full-time authority the institutions cannot out-spread; this calls on institutions to enter the digital sphere with strength and to build mechanisms helping the audience distinguish scholarly from media authority (Chapter Ten). (3) "The withdrawn fatwa" — an institution issues a fatwa it considers sound, a media uproar erupts, and it retracts or softens under pressure, losing the audience's trust; institutions need "media maturity" — to anticipate the uproar before issuing, prepare for it, and not retreat from the truth under pressure.

Conclusion of the Chapter

This chapter offered an ethical framework for digital fatwa, founded on the recognition that digital fatwa needs ethical principles of its own. The proposed code (the responsibility of the published word, the integrity of the title, respect for context, disclosure of funding, the avoidance of incitement, and responsibility for excerpted versions) is not a legal statute but a self-imposed code of conduct safeguarding the trust of exposition.

Chapter Six: Artificial Intelligence and the Question of Fatwa — Its Limits and Controls

A Prelude: The Question Our Classical Jurists Did Not Ask

This chapter departs from a question our classical jurists did not pose, because their age did not call for it: Can artificial intelligence issue fatwa? And what is the difference between its being an assistive tool for the mufti and its being a substitute for him? It proceeds neither from a panic about technology nor from a rush toward it, but examines it calmly against the pillars established earlier — eligibility (Chapter Two), the comprehension of context (Ibn al-Qayyim), and the higher objectives (al-Shāṭibī). The aim is not to forbid AI nor to permit it without restriction, but to clarify the locus of dispute: what does AI in fact do, what may it legitimately do, and what is forbidden to it?

Sub-section One: The Simplified Technical Framework

(1) What are Large Language Models (LLMs)? Tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, trained on enormous quantities of human text (sometimes trillions of words), learning statistical patterns so as to "predict" the probable words of an answer. The pivotal point: they do not "know" information in the sense of understanding and reasoning about it; they predict statistically what comes after what was said — and the prediction may correspond with reality or diverge from it by the same mechanism.

(2) The difference between "knowledge" and "statistical prediction" — human knowledge includes comprehension (grasping meaning, not repeating phrasing), verification (distinguishing the correct from the probable), intention (niyya), and accountability (readiness to bear the burden of error). The model possesses none of these; it answers with the same confidence whether its training patterns were sound or erroneous, having no mechanism for distinction.

(3) Hallucination — the model produces an answer linguistically persuasive yet fabricated: it invents a non-existent source, cites a baseless hadith, or attributes a saying to a scholar who never uttered it — in the same tone as real texts. This diminishes as models develop but will not vanish entirely, for it lies at the core of statistical prediction: the model "cannot know what it does not know," and continues with its best statistical guess. This phenomenon alone suffices to disqualify the model from the platform of fatwa, which cannot bear a fabricated answer delivered in the tone of confidence.

(4) The models' capacities in religious texts — and their limits: they can summon verses, hadiths, and scholarly quotations, but are limited in verifying the attribution of texts (citing a weak or fabricated hadith as sound), distinguishing the accredited from the aberrant among the schools, comprehending the questioner's specific context, and performing higher-objectives estimation.

Sub-section Two: AI vis-à-vis the Pillars of Fatwa

Examining AI against the classical pillars: (1) Legal capacity (taklīf): the model is neither Muslim nor non-Muslim, neither adult nor minor, not characterized by "sound intellect" in the juridical sense — it is not a legally accountable human, so it does not enter the circle of fatwa. (2) Knowledge: the model is "a massive library," but the jurist is not a library — he engages, understands, weighs, and extracts; Ibn al-Qayyim required the mufti be "perceptive (baṣīra) in the proofs of rulings," and perceptiveness is comprehension, not mere preservation. (3) Intention and piety: fatwa is at its core an act of worship; the model does not aim at correctness, fear error, or repent — this drops it from the rank of mufti in its devotional dimension even when its answers coincide with the correct ruling. (4) Comprehending context: it assumes the general context, does not inquire wisely enough, cannot verify what the questioner tells it, and possesses no lived experience. (5) Higher-objectives balancing: it can imitate the language of maqāṣid balancing but cannot in fact balance, for balancing requires a sense of priorities that is natively human. The summary: artificial intelligence is not a mufti and will not be; it lacks all the structural pillars of fatwa, and whoever treats it as a mufti has erred in his conception.

Sub-section Three: Distinguishing Informational Assistance from True Fatwa

If AI is not a mufti, what is it? An exceedingly advanced research tool, not a mufti — like a library, not like a scholar. No one says the library issues fatwa; if the scholar uses it, the fatwa is attributed to him. Legitimate uses (unobjectionable, even useful): searching for texts, comparing views (with hand-verification), retrieving definitions, preliminary translation, drafting initial drafts for review, and indexing/summarizing large quotations. Forbidden uses (absolutely): issuing the fatwa directly from the model; substituting the mufti with an unsupervised "bot"; publishing the model's answers as official fatwas; and using it in fatwas with serious consequences (blood, lineage, ḥudūd, divorce, takfīr). Gray zones (with verification): very basic settled fatwas, jurisprudential definitions, and surveying scholarly disagreement.

Sub-section Four: The Danger of "the Machine Fatwa"

Generative AI opens a door perhaps more dangerous than classical fatwa chaos — "Mass Machine Fatwa": (1) the conversion of fatwa from a devotional act (in which the mufti fears God and bears the burden of his speech) into a mere procedure (input the question, extract the answer — no fear, no reliance on God, no repentance); (2) the loss of accountability (the model is not accountable; the company disavows in its terms of use; the user did not know the answer might be wrong); (3) the stripping of the human relationship between mustaftī and mufti, converting asking into a silent, spiritless transaction; and (4) the tech companies' monopoly on shaping religious discourse — for these companies decide which texts the model is trained on, which topics it answers, and which formulations it adopts; if AI becomes the chief source of religious information, the major technology companies will govern — without the Ummah's awareness — the shaping of its religious discourse: an epistemic-sovereignty threat that deserves vigilance.

Sub-section Five: The Code of AI Usage for the Mufti

A practical code (the detailed entry to "Initiative Four" of Chapter Ten): First — disclosure of the use of the model in preparing the fatwa. Second — the necessity of full human review of everything the model produces (verifying attributions, confirming soundness, examining formulation); it is impermissible to publish machine-generated content unreviewed. Third — forbidden matters in which the mufti may not draw upon the model even for research: blood (takfīr, killing, combative jihād), lineage, divorce, the ḥudūd, and matters of broad political consequence. Fourth — controls for building specialized Sharia models, trained on documented texts under scholarly supervision — more reliable than general models, yet still tools, not muftis. Fifth — education and awareness for the public: that AI is not a mufti, may hallucinate, is to be treated as an informational resource for orientation then verified with the human mufti, and is insufficient in matters of substance.

Conclusion of the Chapter

Presented for the first time in a contemporary jurisprudential book, this foundational analysis concludes: First, AI is not a mufti and will not be — it lacks all the structural pillars. Second, it is an exceedingly advanced research tool when employed under controls — "like a library, not like a scholar." Third, there are legitimate uses, forbidden uses, and gray zones, whose boundaries the proposed code clarifies. Fourth, Mass AI Fatwa is a danger warranting vigilance, for it converts fatwa into a mechanical operation, strips responsibility, and surrenders religious discourse to technology companies outside the Ummah's value system. Fifth, the solution is neither absolute prohibition nor absolute permission, but conscious employment under controls — and fatwa institutions are called to lead this employment rather than leave it to the technology companies.

Chapter Seven: The Fiqh of Minorities in the Digital Balance — The Case of Muslims in America

A Prelude: Why a Dedicated Chapter on the Minorities?

This book springs from a particular context — a paper presented to AMJA in Houston in 2018 — and scholarly fairness required not transferring it into the book without dedicating a chapter to the context out of which it was born. Yet the fiqh of minorities is not regional in its topic: it is a laboratory in which the Western reality revealed many of the problems of fatwa before they reached Muslim-majority lands. The Muslim of the West was the first to face active religious pluralism, the new gender challenges, Islamic finance in Western markets, and schooling between public and Islamic schools — and what he addresses today will be addressed tomorrow in every Muslim land. In the age of globalization, the digital sphere has leveled the distinction between "minority" and "majority" on many issues.

Sub-section One: The Particularity of the American and Western Context

Composition: Muslims in the United States number about 3.5–4.5 million, of varied ethnic backgrounds (immigrants from the Arab world, South Asia, and Africa, and a sizeable proportion of African American Muslims). This ethnic plurality produces a juridical plurality (Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī) within the single mosque — a challenge to unity, yet an opportunity for inter-school recognition, so the American Muslim becomes acquainted with the schools more than his brother in Muslim lands. His principal challenges differ: identitarian (constructing an Islamic identity in a non-Islamic society), economic (engaging a system built on interest), social (founding a Muslim family in an unprotective environment), educational (teaching children religion and worldly knowledge together), and civic (just coexistence with non-Muslim neighbors).

The fiqh of the Abode of Islam vs. the fiqh of minorities: classical fiqh was formulated within dār al-Islām (the Muslim a majority, the laws from the Sharia); the Muslim of the West lives as a minority under secular laws. This does not change the rulings but warrants adaptation in their application — the core of "the fiqh of minorities" articulated by its pioneers (Ṭāhā Jābir al-ʿAlwānī, Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, and others): flexibility in dealing with conventional banks where Islamic alternatives are lacking; the intersection of Sharia marriage with civil personal-status law; expansion in "the food of the People of the Book"; and flexibility in neighborliness, work, and friendship with non-Muslims.

The AMJA experience as a model: since its 2002 founding, AMJA has framed the fiqh of minorities within the American context, proceeding from the faith that importing fatwas from Muslim lands does not suffice. Across fifteen annual conferences its features have emerged: centering upon lived contingencies; inter-school plurality in membership; collective work (fatwas after deliberation, not individual decision); and boldness in engaging sensitive issues (inter-religious marriage, financial transactions, work). This embodies the "Collective Institutional Mujtahid" proposed in Chapter Three — a living reality, not a mere idea, deserving expansion.

Sub-section Two: The Compound Challenges of the Minorities

Seven compound challenges warranting specialized jurisprudence: (1) Identity and integration — when "integration" is required and when "dissolution" is prohibited; the most pressing concern is the children, the second generation under doubled pressure. (2) Family and marriage — the intersection of the Sharia contract (nikāḥ) with the civil contract (civil marriage without nikāḥ; nikāḥ without registration; divorce by Sharia while legally married until judicial separation; inheritance; inter-faith marriage). (3) Finance and Islamic economy — ribā forbidden while the economy rests on usurious banking; AMJA's fatwas (Islamic banks where they exist, conventional banks for safekeeping within controls, the housing-loan fatwa permitting "ijāra ending in ownership," takāful). (4) Schooling between public schools (with content conflicting with Islamic values) and costly Islamic schools. (5) Islamophobia and discrimination — the permissibility of concealing Muslim identity in certain circumstances, of litigation to lift injustice, etc. (6) Liberal social pressure on Sharia rulings — distinguishing the flexibility the Sharia permits (which has breadth) from the dissolution it does not permit (which has a limit): does religion adapt to reality, or the Muslim to his religion? (7) Mental health and imam training — the imam in America is mufti, pastoral counselor, and family adviser, so training in psychology has become a necessity.

Sub-section Three: The Mufti Between Central Authority and Local Reality

When does the fatwa of Muslim lands suffice, and when is a local fatwa required? It suffices for individual acts of worship (settled, context-independent), the principles of creed, and Islamic ethics; a local fatwa is required for financial dealings tied to the American market (mortgage, insurance, taxes), personal status tied to civil law, social issues tied to the civic context, and education within the American system. Communication between the academies of Muslim lands and those of minorities' lands is developing and deserves methodological expansion. Building local competence is the optimal long-term solution — training local scholars combining Sharia formation with deep understanding of the American context, through rigorous local Sharia schools, partnerships with institutions in Muslim lands, independent funding, and long-term investment (a full generation is needed).

Sub-section Four: The Digital Sphere and the Fiqh of Minorities

The American Muslim — especially the young — consumes fatwas via social media more than via the mosque, often following religious influencers from the Arab world or South Asia rather than American scholars. This generates a gap: imported fatwas may not suit the American context; local scholars may find no audience; and distant influencers wear the cloak of authority without understanding the context. The chaos of context takes here its most dangerous form: a young man in California asking a Gulf mufti about a university loan whose structure differs; a mother in New York asking a Cairo shaykh about a school he does not understand — the fatwa may be correct in its original context yet misleading in the American one. The remedy: building accredited local fatwa platforms that publish American scholars' fatwas with easy-access tools, competing with influencers for spread (Chapter Ten, Initiative Two).

Conclusion of the Chapter

The fiqh of minorities is a practical laboratory in which the problems of fatwa are revealed before they reach Muslim lands; and it acquires a new dimension in the digital sphere, where the American Muslim is in daily contact with his original distant authorities — creating a tension between "the distant authority" and "the near context." The desired solution is a strong local fatwa system that understands the context, employs the tools of the digital age, and cooperates with central authorities in Muslim lands (Chapters Eight and Ten). AMJA represents an important model whose experience and tools deserve expansion to suit the new generation of American Muslims who consume their religion principally through their screens.

Chapter Eight: From the Individual Mufti to the Collective Fatwa Ecosystem

A Prelude: Resolving the Tension

There is an implicit tension in the 2018 paper: it speaks of "the individual mufti" with his classical conditions, while contextually proceeding from a collective institution (AMJA) that operates by a different logic. This chapter resolves it — not by canceling either side, but by articulating their relationship — proposing the structural shift the Ummah needs: from the model of the individual mufti to the model of the collective institutional fatwa ecosystem. This is not abolition: personal fatwas and the trust between a Muslim and a particular scholar remain; but major issues, composite contingencies, and fatwas of wide social impact move into the collective institutional frame.

Sub-section One: Why Is the Individual Mufti No Longer Sufficient?

He remains a foundation, especially in personal fatwas; but in the major issues he is no longer sufficient alone, for four reasons: (1) The complexity of contemporary contingencies — genetic engineering and embryo editing (genetics, bioethics, maqāṣid), cryptocurrencies and complex finance (economics, computing, blockchain), AI and fatwa (deep technical understanding plus uṣūl), gender and social-transition issues (psychology, sociology, biology) — no single jurist can be a specialist in all these, and sound ijtihād requires accurate depiction of a composite reality. (2) The speed of successive new questions — generative models (2022), advanced genetic editing, virtual reality, innovated financial systems follow upon one another faster than the individual can track, whereas the institutional ecosystem distributes questions among specialized teams. (3) The need for collective discernment between the aberrant and the considered — the individual fatwa, even from a great scholar, remains an opinion subject to discussion, while the collective institutional fatwa approaches local consensus; in an age effervescing with aberrant fatwas we need an institutional, objective mechanism, "not the voice of an individual declaring another an unbeliever." (4) The gap between the mufti and specialists — solved by "introducing specialties to one another": the jurist and the physician sit at one table, listen together to the case, and emerge together with a resolution.

Sub-section Two: Models of Collective Fatwa

Four patterns: (1) The major fiqh academies — the broadest and most elevated (the International Islamic Fiqh Academy, est. 1981, Jeddah; the European Council for Fatwa and Research, est. 1997, Dublin; the Muslim World League in Mecca; the Islamic Research Council at al-Azhar) — distinguished by breadth, depth, and international reach, but suffering slow production, difficulty coordinating, and non-binding resolutions. (2) Institutional fatwa committees — more national in scope (the Egyptian Dār al-Iftāʾ, since 1313 AH/1895 CE; the Saudi Permanent Committee; the Kuwaiti Diwān al-Iftāʾ; al-Azhar's Senior Scholars' Council; the Jordanian Iftāʾ Department) — stable and rooted, but subject to occasional political influence and a national rather than Ummah-wide focus. (3) Multidisciplinary fatwa teams — combining the mufti with a physician, economist, or technologist for composite contingencies; the most effective in such cases, though restricted to the major issues. (4) Inter-academy participatory fatwa — an aspirational, not-yet-realized model in which the various academies consult before a resolution on a major Ummah-wide issue, yielding broader legitimacy and reducing contradictory resolutions.

Sub-section Three: The AMJA Experience as a Model

Structure and composition: founded in 2002 in Houston by scholars and imams working in North America, to provide a juridical authority to America's imams, frame fatwa in the American context, train imams, and research minority fiqh — comprising a scholarly body of varied schools and ethnicities, a specialized fatwa committee, a research body, training programs, and an electronic fatwa bank. The mechanism of collective fatwa is not by a single shaykh's decision but an established procedure: receiving the question → characterizing the matter → distribution to a competent committee → deliberation and research → drafting after a collective view → publication with the evidences. Lessons from fifteen conferences: inter-school plurality enriches rather than divides; continuity with renewal; linkage to the communities' real needs; and scholarly publication. Challenges and gaps: reach to the public (its resolutions reach specialists more than the social-media public), funding (heavy reliance on volunteering), digital presence (needing expansion to compete with influencers), and coordination with other academies (still nascent).

Sub-section Four: Toward a Digital Fatwa Ecosystem

Five elements compose the larger aspiration: (1) a common technical infrastructure shared among the academies (a database of each academy's fatwas, AI-assisted search and indexing, a coordination system that surfaces contradictory resolutions, and a unified public interface); (2) a unified database of accredited fatwas distinguished by a documented source, published evidences, dates and updates, and ease of access in Arabic, English, and others; (3) a system for verifying attribution and preventing forgery through digital signatures — every academy fatwa carries the "academy's digital signature" that anyone can verify, and what lacks it is treated as unaccredited; (4) a common protocol for major contingencies (a pandemic, a new technology, an economic crisis): speed of movement, immediate inter-academy coordination, and an organized media presence; and (5) partnership with technology companies under controls safeguarding jurisprudential independence — building a Sharia language model under the academies' supervision (as an assistive tool, not a mufti), developing applications for imams and questioners, and partnering with major platforms to enhance the visibility of trusted sources.

Conclusion of the Chapter

The shift from "the individual mufti" to "the collective fatwa ecosystem" is not a substitution but an expansion: the individual mufti remains in his place, especially in personal fatwas, while in the major issues the institutional ecosystem is the most effective. The proposed ecosystem is collective (not individual), multidisciplinary (not purely jurisprudential), published (not concealed), digital (not traditional), and trans-border (not local) — and the AMJA experience, with the challenges it faces, represents an advanced model that activates "the seventh rank" (the Collective Institutional Mujtahid) in practice.

Part Three: Construction

Chapter Nine: Evaluating the Six 2018 Proposals and What Has Been Achieved

A Prelude: A Self-Critical Audit

Eight years after the 2018 talk, the opening question is: what of those six proposals has been achieved, what has not, and why? This self-critical audit is not easy for its author; the practical answer is that reality has not moved much toward those proposals — and in some it regressed. The reason is not necessarily that the proposals were wrong, but that eight years produced three major transformations that overturned the data: the explosion of the influencer economy and short-form video (TikTok, Shorts, Reels); the rise of generative AI that allowed a "machine Sharia answer" in seconds; and the COVID-19 pandemic that normalized digital fatwa. None of these were foreseen in 2018 — some did not exist at all — so the evaluation asks of each proposal not only "succeeded or failed?" but "is it still viable today, or does it need updated formulation?"

Sub-section One: The Six Proposals Between Dream and Realization

Proposal One — unity of institutions around a unified fatwa channel: very limited achievement (some regional partnerships and joint statements, but no unified channel). Obstacles: independent funding, competition among authorities, the rise of social media over satellite channels, and the absence of any executive authority to "ban" channels. Verdict: needs radical reformulation — not a "unified channel" but "a unified fatwa platform capable of integrating with existing platforms," a trusted reference for verification (Chapter Ten, Initiative Two).

Proposal Two — daʿwa workers rallying around references: limited; the opposite occurred — the fragmentation of authorities and the rise of "personal" social-media authorities. Obstacles: political divisions, the passing of major figures (al-Qaraḍāwī, 2022), the influencer economy, and the absence of "full release" of senior scholars. Verdict: sound at its core, but rallying today is around an "ecosystem," not a "person" (Chapter Ten, Initiative Three: A School for Graduating the Digital Mufti).

Proposal Three — channels of communication among official muftis: comparatively good (the academies meet periodically), but global consensus on critical issues has not been achieved, and resolutions may contradict among academies with no coordinating mechanism. Obstacles: diverse political systems, regional disagreements, the non-bindingness of resolutions, and procedural slowness. Verdict: good in endeavor but lacking a permanent coordination mechanism (Chapter Ten: the Multidisciplinary Fatwa Network and the Digital Fatwa Observatory).

Proposal Four — developing the national fiqh academies: the most achieved — AMJA continued 15+ annual conferences, its topics developing from traditional matters to contemporary contingencies (AI, digital finance, digital marriage), as did the ECFR and the Egyptian Dār al-Iftāʾ. Yet the "substantial increase in capacities" was not achieved (limited resources, volunteer members, limited reach to the public). Verdict: clear success but incomplete (Chapter Ten, Initiatives Two and Three).

Proposal Five — teaching people to take fatwas only from the scholars of their lands: limited, and reality regressed — by force of the platforms the audience consumes fatwas from distant influencers who may not live in his context. Obstacles: the openness of the digital sphere, the difficulty of imposing a local authority, and algorithms promoting out-of-context content. Verdict: needs radical reformulation — one can no longer "prevent" the audience from consuming online fatwas; the contemporary formulation is "educating the questioner" to build a critical awareness by which he himself chooses sound authorities (Chapter Ten, Initiative Seven).

Proposal Six — issuing statements of objection to non-specialized channels: scattered attempts without methodical impact; channels and platforms respond to market metrics, not Sharia institutions, and influencers may even use the objections to gain spread. Verdict: needs essential substitution — objection is not effective; the alternative is investing in alternative content rather than objecting to existing content (Chapter Ten, Initiatives Six and Nine).

Sub-section Two: Why Did Implementation Falter? A Structural Analysis

Three repeated patterns — not a defect of the proposals alone but of the framework within which they were formulated: Pattern One — the absence of an executive mechanism: most proposals assumed an authority capable of execution (a union of institutions, a ban on channels), but the Islamic reality lacks such an authority; the lesson: effective proposals operate by the mechanisms of influence (building stronger alternatives, winning the audience by quality), not by imposition. Pattern Two — fatwa centralization in an age of cognitive decentralization: the proposals assumed a "unified authority," but the internet was built from its founding upon decentralization; the lesson: unified authority cannot be built in a space designed for decentralization, but an integrated, trusted network can. Pattern Three — addressing the symptom rather than the structure: several proposals treated visible symptoms (aberrant channels, scattered fatwas) rather than the underlying structural shift in the relationship between the human being and religious knowledge.

Sub-section Three: A Reading of the New Reality After 2018

The reading concludes that the equation has fundamentally changed: from satellite channels to short-form video and AI; from a local audience asking the scholars of his country to a global audience asking the algorithm; and from objection-and-prohibition to influence-and-alternative-building. This sets the stage for Chapter Ten, which translates this self-critical audit into an updated, executable roadmap.

Chapter Ten: A Practical Roadmap for Reforming Fatwa in the Open Sphere

A Prelude: From Diagnosis to Initiative

The preceding chapters placed before us a detailed diagnosis of digital chaos, a foundational and ethical framework for engaging it, and a critical examination of the 2018 proposals — all preparation for this chapter: ten practical, implementable initiatives that may translate theoretical analysis into actions on the ground. We do not claim they alone suffice nor that they admit no modification; they are an entry-point for practical discussion. Each is presented by its general idea, the concerned parties, the required resources, and a success indicator.

An Overview of the Ten Initiatives

Initiative One — The Code of the Digital Mufti: a reference document of ethical and scholarly standards to which every mufti issuing fatwas via the platforms binds himself, building on the Five Compound Qualifications (Chapter Two), the Six Ethical Principles (Chapter Five), and the AI Code (Chapter Six). It issues as "voluntary accreditation," drafted by an alliance of fiqh academies (AMJA, ECFR, the International Fiqh Academy) and adopted by the institutions. Success indicator: its issuance, the signing of 50 accredited scholars within the first year, the adoption of two principal institutions, and the appearance of its effect in platform discourse.

Initiative Two — A Unified Fatwa Platform for America: led by AMJA in partnership with other academies — a digital platform aggregating the accredited fatwas of America's scholars, with a smart search system and direct contact with the mufti, serving the Muslim who wants a context-suited fatwa, the local imam, and the researcher.

Initiative Three — A School for Graduating the Digital Mufti: a training program combining solid Sharia formation with media competence, technological literacy, and awareness of the American reality — the practical answer to the qualification gap.

Initiative Four — An Open-Source Religious Language Model: building an LLM specialized in the Sharia, trained on documented texts under scholarly supervision, used as an assistive tool for informational inquiries — not as a mufti (the detailed entry of the AI Code of Chapter Six).

Initiative Five — A Digital Fatwa Observatory: a research unit that monitors aberrant and viral fatwas, analyzes their patterns and spread, and provides early warning and balanced alternative content.

Initiative Six — Partnership with Major Platforms: promoting the visibility of trusted sources and curbing the spread of non-considered fatwas — investing in alternative content rather than merely objecting to existing content.

Initiative Seven — Educating the Questioner: awareness campaigns building a critical awareness in the public about the ethics of sound questioning and distinguishing scholarly from media authority — the contemporary reformulation of the 2018 "local-scholars" proposal.

Initiative Eight — A Multidisciplinary Fatwa Network: permanent teams gathering scholars with physicians, economists, and technologists for composite contingencies.

Initiative Nine — A Digital Archive of the Fatwa Heritage: digitizing the fatwas of major scholars, indexing them, and easing access — a documented reference countering the "fluid fatwa."

Initiative Ten — An Annual State-of-Fatwa Report: an annual document monitoring the transformations, achievements, and recommendations in the digital fatwa sphere.

Conclusion of the Chapter

These ten initiatives are not fantasy: each is implementable with available resources within a foreseeable horizon, and some have already begun (the unified platform in primitive form, the observatory in some research centers, questioner-education campaigns in some communities). What we lack is integration, expansion, and institutional commitment. This chapter — and this book — does not claim the complete answer; it poses new questions to the jurisprudence of fatwa in a rapidly transforming age and proposes initial paths toward answering them, in the hope of being "a brick in a larger building" in which the scholars of the Ummah and its institutions cooperate to mend what deserves mending and preserve what deserves preserving.

General Conclusion

The journey we have traveled: the book opened with a question simple in appearance, profound in substance — what is fatwa, who is the mufti, what is chaos in fatwa-issuance? — and answered through ten chapters moving between foundation, transformation, and proposal, preserving the classical inheritance and building atop it layers that absorb the transformations of our age.

Core findings: (1) On concepts — the classical definitions remain accurate but require contemporary supplements; a definition of "digital chaos" and a five-fold portrait of the digital mustaftī. (2) On the personhood of the mufti — the classical conditions remain necessary but no longer sufficient; the "Five Compound Qualifications." (3) On the ranks of the mujtahids — extracting Footnote 26 into a standalone chapter and adding the "Contemporary Seventh Rank: the Collective Institutional Mujtahid." (4) On contemporary chaos — five transformations and five dimensions. (5) On the ethical framework — a code of six self-governing ethical principles. (6) On artificial intelligence — AI is not a mufti and will not become one, yet can be a beneficial assistive tool under controls; a warning against "machine-issued fatwa." (7) On digital minorities fiqh — a laboratory in which the problems of fatwa manifest before they reach Muslim-majority lands. (8) On the collective fatwa ecosystem — five elements completing what Chapter Three founded. (9) On evaluating the 2018 proposals — the failures were due not to defects in the proposals so much as to structural transformations larger than them. (10) On the roadmap — ten implementable initiatives.

What this book did not cover (named in fairness so others may continue): the Arab experience distinct from the Western context; a deep technical examination of AI (image generation, voice synthesis, virtual reality); the legal dimension (intellectual property, platform regulation, legal responsibility); comparative religious experiences (Catholic, Jewish); and granular field research.

A reflection on the journey: the author returns to the opening pages seeing the mufti through a different lens than eight years ago — then a "guardian of rulings," now a "guardian of the relationship between the Ummah and its Lord." Digital fatwa, well-used, can be a blessing (allowing the Muslim in a distant land to consult a scholar he knows, opening doors of learning, facilitating communication among scholars); poorly used, it becomes an affliction. The line between blessing and affliction is drawn by us — the scholars of the Ummah, their institutions, and their public.

"Our Lord, accept this from us — indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing." And the last of our supplication is: praise be to God, Lord of the worlds. And may the peace and blessings of God be upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his companions.

— End of the Book —

This is an on-page reading version presenting the structure of the book and the content of its ten chapters in three languages; the complete, detailed text is available in the Arabic and English PDFs above. Written by: Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Abouseif — May 2026.