Fatwa declares suicide attacks as Haram

[Rev. Rye]

I wonder how much scholarly study and debate it required to come up with that? They should have asked me.

You'd be surprised. Given that, evidently, an alarming number of Muslims have a loose enough definition of martyrdom that blowing yourself up for some apparently worthy cause counts as martyrdom and not terrorism (or even suicide), it might take quite a bit of work looking into the Quran and Hadith to come up with an argument as to why it doesn't.

That said, I doubt that many members of ISIS would be likely to heed these scholars' words. Also, it turns out a fatwa isn't really legally binding. It's more like a Judicial Opinion that virtually anyone trained in Islamic Law (everyone from the local Supreme Courts to presumably some self-taught Sharia-equivalent to Suits' Mike Ross) can make. Due to this, legally, they're only binding to the scholars who made them and their allies.

This fatwa will, in the short run, at least, likely do bugger all to stop suicide bombers.