Mufti

A mufti (/ˈmʌfti/; Arabic: مفتي muftī; Turkish: müftü) is an Islamic scholar who is an interpreter or expounder of Islamic law (Sharia and fiqh).^[1] A muftiate or diyanet is a council of muftis.

According to University of Pennsylvania professor George Makdisi's paper "Scholasticism and Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West", https://www.jstor.org/stable/604423, the term mufti is a direct equivalent of the later western term professor, meaning one who is qualified to profess independent opinion on a subject (same as fatwa). According to him, this was the highest level of academic credentials in classical Islamic academic tradition, above mudarris (doctor meaning teacher), and faqih (meaning Master)--a hierarchy later adopted in Western academic tradition.

William Cleveland wrote in his A History of the Modern Middle East that muftis were "experts in Islamic law qualified to give authoritative legal opinions known as fatwas; muftis were members of the ulama establishment and ranked above qadis".

Within Islamic legal schools, a mufti is considered the pinnacle in the hierarchy of scholars because of the advanced training required for the individual aspiring to be a mufti. Originally, muftis were private individuals who gave fatwas informally, regulated their own activities, and determined their own standards of the fatwa institution. A mufti could also be defined as an individual well-grounded in Islamic law.

Qualifications

A mufti will generally go through a course in iftaa, the issuance of fatwa, and the person should fulfill the following conditions set by scholars in order that he may be able to issue verdicts (fatwas):^[2]