The Ayatollah as Miss Manners

Washington Monthly, April, 2005 by Charles Peters

I had thought that "fatwa" was a pronouncement of heavy import--like "eliminate the heathen from our midst"--laid on the faithful by some ayatollah. I'm grateful to Philip Kennicott of The Washington Post, who has explained that this is not at all the case. One fatwa issued by Ayatollah Ali Sistani says that facelifts are permissible.

Another, Fatwa 2638 to be exact, says "there is no objection to swallowing the food which comes out from between the teeth at the time of tooth picking" All this sounds quite tolerant, but beware of Fatwa 2648: You should not drink water "from the side of a container which is cracked or chipped off.'