Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – The Difference between a Mufti, Judge and Arbitrator

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?