If Scalia had no written law to follow, no need to follow precedent, his every remark would be more significant than it is now.
Is Abdul-Aziz ibn Abdullah Al Shaykh a qadi? If he is not an active or former judge, could he theoretically just be appointed one by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz ?
andros, I decided to make your day and notice you.
“More significant” is still not “has the force of law”. As you can tell by the fact that despite the Shaykh’s fatwa, there was a chess tournament held right in the city of Mecca.
:rolleyes:
Doesn’t matter, since he wasn’t acting as a qadi at the time, but giving his opinion on a television call-in show. And therefore, despite your continued and perplexing insistence to the contrary, “lacks legal standing under Saudi civil law”.
Perhaps you should instead devote your time and attention to ACTUALLY LEARNING WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT SO YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE SUCH A FUCKING TOOL.
Sheesh.
okay, okay you got me. To keep up my status as a bigoted, racist, xenophobic, troll, I am required to spend a certain amount of time each day reading such claptrap as this and this and that is what I was doing before reading your link.
The FP’s claim that the fatwa lacks legal standing is presented without elaboration and contradicts other sources.
Say for example that our favorite Mufti, instead of finding Pokeman as something to beware, determined that it was witchcraft. Do you claim this would be insignificant to the Witchcraft Police?
Neither of which has anything to do with your dumb assertions. The first one actually highlights how you’re wrong, by describing the Saudi court system. A call-in TV show, even in Saudi Arabia, is NOT A COURT.
“Your ass” is not a source.
If Pokémon had a thousand-year tradition in the Muslim world, there were numerous Pokémon clubs in Saudi Arabia, and there was a Pokémon tournament held right in Mecca a few days after that fatwa was issued, yeah.
You missed “amusingly stupid.”
My goodness, these thing become amazingly out of hand so quickly! :dubious:
Nope, because in Arabic the queen isn’t a queen, it’s a wazīr, which means ‘minister’. Or firzān, from a Persian word with a similar meaning. Also, by pre-European chess rules, it didn’t have nearly as much power as it does now.
Persian Gulf, if you please!
When in Arabia… 
I’m just glad that the “religious” fanatics in this country don’t control all the law (yet).
When last I left you, we had A’isha claiming…
When you go back through all the vitriol… that the Grand Mufti’s fatwa about Chess is akin to
Other commentators agreed it had no legal meaning in Saudi Arabia. See posts 126, 163 and 208.
My local library does not have the equivalent of “The Saudi Arabian Judicial System for Dummies”, but I found a resource that is suitable. It is “Studies in Modern Islamic Law and Jurisprudence”, by Oussama Arabi, ISBN 90-411-1660-5. Chapter 7 is titled “The Itinerary of a Fatwa: Ambulant Marriage (al-Zawaj Al-Misyar), or Grass Roots Law-Making in Saudi Arabia of the 1990s.” (Excuse me, but I am not going to type the quotes with some of the diacritical marks that appear on Arabic words).
p. 147, the first sentence of the work.
p. 148
p. 150-154 summarize the Islamic law on marriage, including polygynous marriage. Our issue under discussion concerns just Saudi Arabia, but I think this is worth quoting: p. 151
p 154 - 156 describe the practice of one Fahd al-Salman, a marriage agent. In ambulatory marriage, the wife is not provided a home by the “husband”. Commonly she stays at her parents. The husband pays a dowry that is 10% of that of a usual marriage (p. 155). In return, he gets sex. Here is a Wikipedia that explains some background about this custom. The marriage is disclosed to two witnesses as required by Islamic law, but the kicker is that there is usually a provision of the marriage contract that the marriage is to be kept secret.
p. 157 has the breakdown by “circuit”/school
p 158-164 describe what I take to be “Letters to the Editor” in newspapers (or periodicals ? ) Jaridat 'Uqaz, and Aziza al-Mani (?). Various writers discuss the ethics and legality of Ambulant Marriage. One writer references “the classical Hanabali treatise al-'Umda”:
p. 162
p. 164
The fatwa was published in question and answer form in * Jaridat al-Jarizra*, September 30, 1996.
Earlier there is footnote 45 on p 163.
p. 166
p. 167
In summary: There was a question about a certain practice. It was presented to the GM in an article, similar to a radio call-in show, and as opposed to an actual court case. He decided a specific issue, issued a fatwa, which became law under the judicial system of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Tell me again who is pulling what out of whose ass?
I thought today of this old post. The meta-story of how this was asserted and then denied is not clear to me, and may not ever be. I did find it of interest that there is a
General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars;
a General Presidency for Scholarly Research and Ifta which has a
Standing Committee for Issuing Fatwas
and that they number them, the one in question being. 21,758.
Did Antonin Scalia have all this organization? (see #379).
I just don’t have time to review this entire thread, but surely someone has pointed out that calls for bans on chess or alterations of the pieces on the chessboard by Muslim clerics is as old as Islam itself.