Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – The Difference between a Mufti, Judge and Arbitrator
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I just want to clarify one thing. I've had this experience twice
now, I received the question from somewhere.
Generally generally related to a divorce issue
or a husband wife conflict. So I got this well worded written out.
Question a fatwa is ticked up asking for a fatwa. So I look at
it, and I respond based on exactly what's mentioned in there. And
this is essentially the task of the Mufti to do this.
Then after that, two occasions, I've then had after a few weeks,
or whatever it is, or sometimes after a few months, one, in one
case, it was after a few weeks. In one case, after a few months, I'll
get another correspondence from someone else, from somebody else,
saying that you've given a wrong photo, your foot you have in one
case, it was your footwork conflicts with the fatwa of
another Mufti in another town in England. I have a lot of respect
for that Mufti. So I said, what happened? Which fatwa did I give
him? What was the issue? I tried to avoid localized issues, where I
just tell people look, ask the local mufti, there is no see what
sometimes what people do is they ask them off the somewhere else
who doesn't understand the whole significance of that context. They
get a yes patois from him. And then they wave it around to all
the other people in that area. Whereas the Mufti is in that area
know the situation better. And they would say it's wrong. In that
case, I try to avoid those kinds of situations anyway. So this
wasn't one of those kinds of cases, I was quite perturbed. I
said, what happened? And then I discovered that what it was, is
that he's saying that you did not listen to the whole story. And you
acted based on one side. So then, this was the first case. In the
second case, again, it was a wife asking me certain questions. I
responded, based on what she asked me no more than that. And then her
husband calls me several months afterwards saying, I'm really
upset. I read my wife's email. I read your response to her. And
there were a lot of inaccuracies in it says whether inaccuracies in
my response or the inaccuracies in what she said. He said, obviously,
in what she said. So then I tried to explain to him, I said, Look,
first and foremost, don't worry about it. Because I don't even
remember much of these details. We answer so many questions. We
don't, we can't remember. We shouldn't want to remember all of
these details, and walk around knowing so much about other
people. It's not right, right. It's not healthy as well. So first
and foremost, you don't have to worry about that. Number two, let
me explain something. And this is the main point of bringing this up
today. There are three different hats a person can wear. There are
three different capacities that a person can act in. Because there
are three roles we're talking about. One is the role of a Mufti.
Number two is the role of a official of the an official judge,
set up by the government, by the ruling faction, whatever it may
be, right, that's the party. And number three is the arbitrary. The
arbitrator, the one who's been set up as a judge in an unofficial
manner between two parties that I've said, Okay, we'll listen to
what you say. So now you've got three positions, arbitrator called
the judge and number three is a Mufti
and one has to understand each one of these, the coffee is the most
powerful position, the coffee is set up by the government. He has
the law at his hands, whatever he says the decree that he gives can
be imposed, they can use force to impose it that is legislative, it
is something is not just an opinion, it is the law. When a cow
he says something, he consults a Mufti. The Mufti is the
knowledgeable scholar about the fic and jurisprudence about
something, they give an opinion they could have 10 Both these as
his consultants, and he will take based on what he thinks from these
different movies. Now, in this case, in this country, we don't
have any of these as such, generally speaking, we generally
have the arbitrators, arbitrators. And so now we're going to deal
with arbitrator, arbitrator and coffee very similar except that
the coffee is official, arbitrator is not official. That's the only
difference prior main difference. We're going to understand the
difference between an arbitrator
and a Mufti. If I get a question from somebody, my job as a Mufti
is only to respond to what I'm being asked about. No more than
that. It's not my job to then go and investigate, hire an
investigator do snooping myself, and to kind of figure out what the
reality is and whether it's real or not, or this, that and other.
That's not my job as a Mufti Murthy just responds to the
question please to him. That's what I'm doing. arbitrator on the
other hand, if he hears one side of the story, and he makes a
judgment, you will be completely wrong to do this. Because his
judgment tends to be binding and you can't
Have a binding judgment when you don't know the full story. So the
arbitrator has to ask both sides, speak and consult with both sides
and really assess the matter and then try to ascertain the truth
that both these job is different. Yes, if a Mufti wants to then act
as an arbitrator and get involved in a marriage issue or a
situation, it's a different story whatsoever, but when you get a
straightforward questionnaire from one person, as an estimator, our
job is only to respond to that. And if you look in the books of
fatawa Kitab Nica, you know, all of these photo books Kitab Nica,
this is what you'll see, there's a question that's asked, and the
response given based on that question. And a lot of the time,
the question could be, not 100% accurate. But that's why it's the
responsibility of the other side that if somebody shows you a
fatwa, you look at the question that was asked.
That's very important, but it is not the job of Mufti to go and
investigate to find out both sides of the story and then give his
response because he is not an arbitrator. Yes, if somebody asks
a Mufti to arbitrate, and the mostly agrees to arbitrate, then
he can ask both questions. So then he's going to be wearing the hat
of an arbitrator them and not just not just the hat of a mufti, but
when he's wearing the hat of just the Mufti, then he's only going to
respond based on what's asked of him. So just try to understand
that this will help cases inshallah you won't have to deal
with such cases. But I'm just mentioning this because it's it's
a common kind of misunderstanding that why did he ask the other side
of the story?