The Impact of Social Norms on Fatwa-Making: An Ethnographic Study at Al-Azhar's Fatwa Council

In the present thesis, I elaborate the history of my case study (Al-Azhar's Fatwa Council) and shed light on the uniqueness of its fatwas as an official fatwa council in comparison to the official state-fatwa council. I also study the function of muftis in the modern time and their relation to the question of secularity and the implementation of Islamic law. I attempt to understand the mechanism of making fatwa in the modern time, and how mufti have been influenced by their preconceived thoughts of the social norms of the Egyptian society. The impact of social norms like age of marriage, nuclear family, and aversion of divorce is discussed in detail through my ethnographic study. In the present thesis, I compare between two ways of accommodating the social norms to the Islamic law; the first is the traditional mechanism known as 'urf theory in Islamic law, and the other is how muffs in Al-Azhar's fatwa council has impacted by the modern social norms.