In this brief contribution, I would like to put on the table the question of whether the notorious ‘fatwa’ issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against Rushdie is really a fatwa in the first place? This is neither an academic exercise nor a purely theoretical investigation, but a matter of great practical relevance to any strategy (and tactics) for helping Rushdie the prisoner, writer and human being transcend the debilitating impasse in which he finds himself locked at present.

From the very start it seemed to me that Ayatollah Khomeini's celebrated ‘fatwa’ did not read like a fatwa; neither did it have the form, texture and feel of what Muslims – both Sunni and Shi‘i – would commonly recognize as a fatwa. For, a fatwa normally takes the form of a responsa, a dispensation, a practical solution, a way out addressed to the problems, paradoxes, anomalies, puzzles etc., that life throws up constantly in the face of the faithful; be they the high and mighty or the poor and humble. Thus, a fatwa's most common function is the circumvention of the application of the letter of the law to avoid unnecessary injury to life, limb, property, family, community and so on. This is why a good Mufti is invariably a bad Muslim. This is why also the routine of issuing fatwas is mostly associated in common Arabic parlance with such not-quite-honorable practices as hair splitting, verbal quibbling, vulgar casuistry, the drawing of Jesuitical distinctions, the torturing of texts, the unprincipled bending of principles and servility to the powers that be.

The above considerations are vitally important for the often raised question of whether the so-called fatwa is rescindable, retractable and/ or circumventable? In fact it would have been in Rushdie's favor had Khomeini's ‘fatwa’ been really a proper fatwa, because the procedural rules and conventions for dealing with such dispensations are well-known, well-established and well-observed by all those concerned. Furthermore, a fatwa can be counteracted, diluted, moderated or invalidated by another fatwa issued by an equally competent ‘alim, Shaikh, Mufti, Faqih, juri-consult etc. In principle, any person who regards himself versed in Muslim law and doctrine and finds others willing to follow and listen to him is entitled to produce fatwas on this or that matter of life's affairs, large and small. His fatwas are not binding except to those who accept his opinions as a juri-consult. For example, the assassins of President Sadat of Egypt sought and obtained a fatwa from a trusted shaikh of their own allowing them to proceed with their plan to kill the apostate president. In the end, the fact that Ayatollah Khomeini's so-called fatwa became so potent is an affair of state, power politics and revolution and not an affair of faith, Muslim theology and Shari‘ah law.