Mufti

A mufti is a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh, qualified through advanced study to issue fatwas, authoritative legal opinions, in response to specific questions brought by individuals, communities or institutions, a role that exists at every level from a locally respected scholar answering an individual's everyday religious question to senior state-appointed muftis whose rulings carry weight across an entire country or region, the Grand Mufti representing the most senior tier of this same basic function rather than a categorically different office. Qualification as a mufti traditionally required extensive study of the Quran, hadith, and the accumulated legal reasoning of one of the recognized schools of Islamic jurisprudence, sufficient to apply established legal principles to new and specific circumstances rather than merely repeating previously settled rulings.

The practice of ifta, issuing fatwas, has adapted considerably to modern circumstances, including the emergence of online fatwa services and international fatwa councils that bring together muftis from multiple countries to address questions, particularly in Islamic finance and bioethics, that cross national boundaries in ways traditional local fatwa-giving was not originally structured to address, reflecting both the increased mobility of Muslim populations worldwide and the genuinely new categories of question modern technology and global commerce continually generate.

The modern office of grand mufti, found today in states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, descends institutionally from the Ottoman Empire's Sheikh ul Islam, the empire's highest ranking religious authority, who issued binding fatwas on matters of state importance and whose approval was traditionally sought for major political and legal decisions, including, on occasion, the legitimacy of a sultan's accession or deposition.

When the Ottoman state and its religious institutions were dismantled in the early twentieth century, the successor states that emerged across the former empire and the wider Sunni Muslim world each developed their own national grand mufti offices, generally with narrower and more explicitly state defined authority than the Ottoman Sheikh ul Islam had held, tied to a single country's legal and religious establishment rather than to an empire spanning multiple regions and peoples. Alongside these officially appointed positions, the rise of satellite television and, later, the internet has allowed some independently recognized scholars to build fatwa issuing authority and public followings that rival or exceed a state appointed grand mufti's reach within their own country, a development that has noticeably changed how religious authority in Sunni Islam is exercised and contested in the contemporary period.