Battle of the fatwas

ON JULY 6, 170 of the world's leading Muslim clerics and scholars gathered in Amman, Jordan, where, in an unprecedented display of inter-sectarian collaboration, they issued a joint\o7 fatwa\f7\o7 \f7 denouncing all acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam. Never before had representatives of every major sect and school of law in Islam assembled as a single body, much less addressed issues of mutual concern.

Yet the message of the Amman declaration against terrorism was neither new nor unique. Despite lingering misperceptions in the West, since Sept. 11, 2001, hundreds of \o7fatwas\f7 have been issued by Muslim groups and clerical leaders around the world denouncing terrorism in general and Al Qaeda in particular. Needless to say, the \o7fatwas\f7 have had no influence on murderous jihadists such as the Jordanian-born Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi. Four months after the July 6 gathering, in what may not be a coincidence of timing, Amman became his group's latest target.

In one way in particular, the Amman \o7fatwa\f7 targeted the likes of Zarqawi. Among its many pronouncements against violence and extremism was an all-encompassing statement reaffirming the long-standing principle that no one but a qualified Muslim cleric could issue a \o7fatwa\f7. It was meant as a direct rebuke of Osama bin Laden and Zarqawi, neither of them clerics or scholars, who routinely issue their own -- illegitimate \o7 -- fatwas\f7 declaring, among other things, jihad on the United States. These \o7fatwas\f7 have as much legitimacy for the Muslim clerics as a papal bull issued by a Catholic Church youth leader would for the Vatican.

Moreover, the Amman declaration signaled an implicit, if belated, recognition on the part of the international Muslim clergy of what many scholars of Islam and observers of the region have been saying for decades: The conflicts taking place in many parts of the Arab and Muslim world are not the result of a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West but rather are part of an internal conflict among Muslims. In that light, the Amman declaration was, above all, an attempt by Islam's clerical leaders to re-exert some measure of influence in the war to define the faith and practice of more than a billion people.

It didn't work.

The day after the Amman gathering, four young British Muslims obliterated themselves and 52 bus and Tube passengers during the height of rush hour in London. Almost immediately, Muslim clerics in Britain and throughout the world issued another round of \o7fatwas\f7, once again denouncing the use of violence and terrorism in the name of Islam.