Fatawa A'immat al-Muslimin bi-Qat' Lisan al-Mubtadi'in

Mahmud Khattab al-Subki gathered in this book the fatwas of Al-Azhar scholars against popular innovations linked with funerals, celebrations, the mawlid and some collective dhikr. The book gives each question, then each scholar's answer, and the author's own comments alongside them. ¹

The fatwas address gatherings where the Qur'an, prayer and the angels are mocked. They rule that whoever does this has left the religion, that whoever approves of it is the same, and that ignorance does not excuse it as grounds for apostasy (pp. 104–107). They also cover distorting the divine name and the formula of tawhid in dhikr circles, which they treat as a sin deserving discipline (pp. 109–110), and a group that repeats the sound «ah» as a divine name, which they reject, since God's names are fixed by revelation (pp. 117–118). ²

The same section includes other rulings: on raised voices at funerals, on smoking tobacco, on the tarqiya before the preacher, and on reciting Surat al-Kahf aloud on Friday (pp. 119–125). ³

Source: recorded in Fatawa A'immat al-Muslimin bi-Qat' Lisan al-Mubtadi'in. Read from the Waqfeya OCR text; the page images have not yet been checked.