fatwa
n. countablen. an official religious ruling or legal decision made by a religious leader. It usually explains how a specific law or rule should be applied to a situation.
n. an official interpretation or ruling on Islamic law issued by a qualified religious scholar. Often carries significant legal or moral weight within the community.
The religious leader issued a fatwa on the new law.
After the debate over the new dress code, the council requested a fatwa to clarify the religious requirements.
While a fatwa is intended to provide guidance on complex ethical issues, its enforceability often depends on the political and social structures of the specific country in question.
The noun is borrowed from Arabic فَتْوَى (fatwā, “formal legal opinion”), the verbal noun of أَفْتَى (ʔaftā, “to deliver a formal opinion”) (whence مُفْتٍ (muftin, “mufti”), the active participle of the same verb: see mufti). The forms fetwa, fetwah are derived from Italian fetfà (obsolete), and directly from its etymon Ottoman Turkish فتوی (fetva) (modern Turkish fetva), from Arabic فَتْوَى (fatwā): see above. Modern uses of noun noun sense 1.2 (“decree that a person should be put to death”) and the corresponding verb sense are probably influenced by the issuance of a fatwa on 14 February 1989 by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1900 or 1902 – 1989), the Supreme Leader of Iran, calling for the British-American author Salman Rushdie (born 1947) and his publishers to be put to death for alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses (1988). The plural form fatawa is borrowed from Arabic فَتَاوَى (fatāwā). The verb is derived from the noun.