Dial-a-Fatwa

An Islamic phoneline that offers religious advice to believers.

One of the world’s most popular Islamic telephone hotlines, el-Hatef el-Islami, is about to launch its first English language service in the United Kingdom, Riazat Butt reported in The Guardian:

Dubbed dial-a-fatwa and dial-a-sheikh in its native Egypt, [the phone line] will draw on the expertise of scholars from Cairo’s al-Azhar University to provide perplexed believers with help and religious rulings (fatwas) on everyday dilemmas. British callers can ring in with their problems, and access the answer up to 48 hours later by punching in a pin number. The hotline will also include an email facility, with advice sent in English, Urdu and Arabic at a cost of 69p [$1.05] a message.

Dial-a-Fatwa services are common throughout the Middle East, offering quick solutions to religious quandaries. In March 2001, when el-Hatef el-Islami launched its first international venture (in Jordan), the BBCexplained the appeal of the service – anonymity:

People can ask potentially embarrassing questions without fear of being found out.

[The founders] say the hotline receives around 500 calls a day from Egyptians wanting to know everything from Islam’s view on masturbation or bank interest to the correct divorce procedures.

In an October 2008 article (splendidly titled “Dial M for Mufti”), The Times of London reported that the United Arab Emirates government had founded an official dial-a-fatwah service:

The U.A.E. Government established the call center … in an attempt to root out extreme interpretations of Islam issued by unqualified scholars. All fatwas issued through the call center comply with the Government’s moderate religious stance. Any others are considered invalid instructions.

(The Columbia World Dictionary of Islam states “It is a vulgar error to suppose that a Fatwa is a ‘sentence of death,’ or some such thing, as Western journalists sometimes imply.” Rather, “A ‘Fatwa’ (Arabic plural ‘Fatawa’) is nothing more or less than the answer to a question on a matter of religion put to a person qualified to deliver answers to such questions, who is known as a mufti.”)