When “Highly Trained” Isn’t Enough: What the Towering Fatwas Reveal About Clerical Power in Islam Adis Duderija There is a particular kind of modern Muslim anxiety that doesn’t come from atheism, secularism, or even Islamophobia. It comes from within: the sinking feeling that, at any moment, a “highly trained” cleric—credentialed, authorised, and amplified—may issue a ruling so spectacularly unmoored from reason and moral sensibility that it becomes difficult to explain, even to ourselves, how such things can pass as “Islamic guidance.” The Critical Muslim list of “ Top Ten Towering Fatwas ” is written in a satirical register, but the underlying material is not fiction: it is a catalogue of rulings attributed to official muftis, senior seminary institutions, and state-linked councils. The list begins with a Saudi grand mufti’s insistence—after “considerable study,” we are told—that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. If satire works here, it’s because the ru...