Spanish Muslims Issue Fatwa Against Bin Laden

What an interesting turn of events.

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's leading Islamic body has issued a religious order declaring Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) to have forsaken Islam by backing attacks such as the Madrid train bombings a year ago.

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Linky

I just read that before logging on here.

So, what does that mean? What's a fatwa? Is it like being censured by Congress? Does he have to wear the dunce cap at the next convention? Does he have to lop off a finger?

Fatwa.
This has surprised me. Not because I consider Spanish muslims bad people, but because I didn't expect them to be so overtly vocal. We'll see how (and if) this works. It looks more like a façade thing, something more symbolic than with any real weight.

But what is a Fatwa? The website talks of how they're called and that there is no central governing body but it doesn't actually say what it is.

From the Rushdie story, it almost sounds like it's a "contract" or a death sentence.

A fatwa is a religious edict. It implies some scholarly religious muslim clerics got together and decided to make a public statement that "such and such" ought to be done/avoided/observed/killed/followed.

One wonders why a simliar fatwa wasn't issued from American Muslim clerics a year after the 9/11 attacks.

A fatwa is a religious edict. A fatwa can be issued by an imam, a group of imams, or Joe Muslim. Islam is highly decentralized, so these things have varying degrees of significance. (Many Muslim web sites, for example, have "ask the imam" type things; essentially religious advice columns. The responses are fatwas.)

Most fatwas of this nature are symbolic. That doesn't mean it doesn't have weight, that means there's very little practical application. The only significant thing that may result from it is that Spanish imams might be more vocal in their condemnations and criticisms of bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

So is this a 'kill on sight fatwah', or a 'we greatly deplore' symbolic one?