With no centralized Islamic religious authority like a Pope or Dalai Lama, pretty much any Muslim “scholar” can create a fatwa, a religious edict for modern life supposedly guided by the Koran or the (less authoritative) hadiths- stories from Muhammad’s life. In recent years, supply has far outstripped demand, and it’s getting laughable. Most fatwas are harmless and a little mundane, but lately, some Islamic jurists have gone straight crazy.

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#10) Sun and Earth
The Fatwa: Grand Mufti Sheikh Ibn Baaz: The Sun Revolves Around the Earth

In a 2000 Fatwa titled “The Transmitted and Sensory Proofs of the Rotation of the Sun and Stillness of the Earth”, Saudi Arabian Grand Mufti Sheikh Ibn Baaz asserted that the earth was flat and disk-like and that the sun revolved around it. He had insisted that satellite images to the contrary were nothing but a Western conspiracy against the Islamic world.

Source: Al-Ahram Weekly Issue 477, 13-19 April, 2000.

#6) Emoticons
The Fatwa: Multaqa Ahl al Hadeeth: Emoticon fatwa

I can almost get behind this one. Sure, they’re annoying, but evil? Really? Well, to a Muslim forum looking to make a name for itself—yes.

According to Muslim Internet Forum Multaqa Ahl al Hadeeth, “Emoticons are forbidden because of its imitation to Allah’s creatures whether it is original or mixture or even deformed one and since the picture is the face and the face is what makes the real picture then emoticons which represent faces that express emotions then all that add up to make them Haram.” Additionally, “A woman should not use these images when speaking to a man who is not her mahram, because these faces are used to express how she is feeling, so it is as if she is smiling, laughing, acting shy and so on, and a woman should not do that with a non-mahram man. It is only permissible for a woman to speak to men in cases of necessity, so long as that is in a public chat room and not in private correspondence.”