May a mufti take a fee or a gift for a fatwa?

The forty-fifth of the benefits concerning fatwas in I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in is devoted to taking a fee, a gift or a stipend for giving fatwas; Ibn al-Qayyim says it covers three cases, different in cause and ruling. ¹

Ibn al-Qayyim holds that taking a fee for a fatwa is not permitted, because giving fatwas is an office of conveying from God and His Messenger, for which no compensation may be taken. He compares it to someone saying, "I will not teach you Islam, ablution or prayer except for a fee", or, asked about the lawful and the forbidden, "I will not answer you except for a fee": this, he says, is certainly forbidden; the payment must be returned and does not become his property. ¹

He reports the view of some later scholars that if the mufti answers in writing he may tell the questioner, "I am not obliged to write for you except for a fee", treating it like a copyist's wage – a fee for the handwriting, not for the answer. Ibn al-Qayyim replies that the correct view is the opposite: the mufti owes the answer free, for God's sake, both spoken and written, though he is not obliged to supply paper or ink. ¹ In a note the editor states that a fee for the writing is the Hanafi view and that of Abu Hatim al-Qazwini among the Shafi'is, and refers to the schools' sources. ¹

Ibn al-Qayyim distinguishes gifts. If it is not occasioned by the fatwa – from someone who habitually exchanges gifts with him, or who does not know he is a mufti – there is no harm in accepting it, and it is better to reciprocate. If it is occasioned by the fatwa, then if it is a means to his giving a fatwa that others, who receive no gift, would not give, he may not accept it; and if he would give the same fatwa as others, accepting it is disliked, because it resembles payment for giving fatwas. ^{1 2}

A stipend from the public treasury is, for him, permitted to one in need; for one who does not need it there are two views. He describes the question as falling between likening the mufti to the zakat collector, whose service benefits everyone and who may therefore take, and likening him to the guardian of an orphan, who is barred; the judge, he says, is in the same position as the mufti, indeed more strictly barred. ²

The Hanafi and Shafi'i texts on the question from their own books, the history of stipends for muftis and judges in Muslim states, and the question in modern fatwa institutions have not yet been added.