Australian Imans.

[mmurray]

Have they ever made a fatwa declaration like this ?

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/08/canada-muslim-fatwa-attack-canada-united-states.html

Michael

[Sir Patrick Crocodile]

But was it Shia or Sunni fatwa being declared? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwā)

Also, you know what is interesting? They never made such crybaby style statements until people started to criticize Islam and before then they were OK with it. In fact apparently it was the Muslim way.

Before it was all about jihad and now all of a sudden they claim that when Muslims are attacking non-Muslims they are attacking Muslims which is a contradiction.

I do have a strong interest in such affairs, being an ex-Muslim myself, as I am quite fed up with the lies other Muslims tell in order to spread their religion.

This sort of behavior seems to affect other religions too.

In any case remember that it is opinion on Islamic law from an Islamic scholar. It is not necessarily true either.

[Sir Patrick Crocodile]

@Black: Imams are not *necessarily* self-taught though. If I remember this one correctly, the Imams have to meet certain criteria (at least they definitely must have had their misaq!) before they can be "certified" with such.

Actually there is a "Grand Mufti" though - called Aqa Mullah and he is kind of an Islamic analog to the Catholic pope. Except just a little bit more magical.

Basically if I remember the hierarchical structure it is as follows:
Allah Prophets/Nabihs(sp?) Aqa mullah Imams Amil saab Mullahs Men Women ChildrenNote the list is from the highest to lowest. Think of it as ordinals when iterating through the list.

There are others though (I presume they come in par between Prophets and Mullahs) and I cannot recall the name at the moment, but these people are such that they can recite the Quran off by heart. They are significant in Islam in case "the quran gets destroyed" they can re-write it entirely from their brain. In my opinion this is asking for trouble but that's Islamic structure.

At least this is how I remember it - I have edited the list as I remembered things better.

They are also make up a large subset of the people who can see the farishtas (the angels supposedly present on EVERYBODY's shoulders who record all the good and bad things that are done; the angel on the left records bad and the angel on the right records good) and have powers and can heal sick people if those people pray hard enough and if Allah says it is OK to heal them.