I’m afraid, Brian Whittaker in The Guardian(well, CiF, actually) may be right.
The whole idea of waging “fatwa wars” with extremists is not only futile but anti-progressive and further entrenches the authoritarian tendencies in Islam. Issuing fatwas and promoting them, even in a good cause, is damaging because it ends up reinforcing the importance attached to fatwas in general.
He is of course responding to the story that an influential Muslim scholar has issued a global ruling against terrorism and suicide bombing.
Whittaker disagrees with Ed Hussein who also writes in The Guardian’s CiF that “Fatwas can be a force for good”.
