Supreme Court stays Uttarakhand HC order barring fatwas

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Uttarakhand HC direction barring all religious outfits from issuing 'fatwas' and issued notice to the state government on a plea challenging the validity of its order.

Agreeing to hear the plea of Muslim organisation Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind which challenged the HC's August 30 order, a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta sought response from the state government.

The HC, while declaring 'fatwas' unconstitutional and illegal, had passed the order after taking cognisance of a media report of a panchayat issuing 'fatwa' for banishing a rape survivor's family from a village in Roorkee district. "In Uttarakhand, all religious bodies, statutory panchayats, and any other groups of people are banned from issuing fatwas, since they infringe upon statutory rights, fundamental rights, dignity, status, honour and obligation of individuals," the high court had said.

Challenging the HC order, the petitioner contended that the order banning issuance of 'fatwa' by religious outfits was illegal and unsustainable as the issue had been adjudicated by the SC in 2014 and legality of 'fatwa' upheld. It has said that "only authorised and well qualified person is competent to issue fatwa i.e. Darul Ifta (fatwa council) or Muftis are jurists qualified to give authoritative opinion as per Shariat law known as fatwas."

"A candidate is conferred the degree of Mufti after he successfully completed the comprehensive course in Islamic jurisprudence which takes 8 to 10 years, " the petition said. It said a fatwa is only an opinion and not binding on the court, state or individual. "The HC has erred in passing the impugned order in haste only on the basis of the news item on same day without summoning the officials concerned and without testing the veracity of the news item where the word 'fatwa' is not printed but 'farman' of so-called panchayat is printed," the petition said.