Muslims in Egypt seeking religious guidance may now turn to satellite television and the Internet for opinions from as far afield as Indonesia - unless they follow the fatwa issued in 2004 by the Dar ul-Ulum, India's largest Islamic seminary, that ruled Muslims shouldn't watch TV.
With no pope or patriarch to arbitrate orthodoxy, "it's the nature of Islamic thought to have many options," says Abdel Moti Bayoumi, who heads the Islamic Research Compilation Center in Cairo. "But there are too many unqualified opinions being spread, and this is wrong."
The result is what MENA, Egypt's official news agency, calls "fatwa chaos."