Muharramat: Forbidden Matters Some People Take Lightly

Shaykh Muhammad Salih al-Munajjid is a Syrian-Saudi Islamic scholar and the founder of IslamQA.info, the most widely consulted English-language fatwa website in the Muslim world. Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1380 AH / 1962 CE to a Palestinian family that had migrated to Syria, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia in his early years, growing up in the Eastern Province. He earned his bachelor's degree from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, while pursuing parallel Islamic studies under leading scholars including Shaykh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Salih al-Uthaymin, and Shaykh Abdullah ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Jibreen — under whom he studied for seventeen years.

Al-Munajjid founded IslamQA in 1996 in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, originally as an Arabic-language fatwa service that grew to publish English, Urdu, French, Turkish, Indonesian, and other translations. The site now hosts more than one hundred thousand answered questions on creed, fiqh, family, social, and economic matters, and has become the default first reference for English-speaking Muslims seeking traditional rulings online. He also delivers Friday sermons at the Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz Mosque in Khobar, where he has served as imam and khatib for more than three decades. His published works include Madarik al-Nazr fi al-Siyasa, al-Khutuwat 'Amaliyya li-Tathbit al-Iman, and dozens of compiled fatwa volumes drawn from the website.

Al-Munajjid's role as a digital-era fatwa authority is distinctive in contemporary Muslim scholarship: where most senior scholars work primarily through traditional teaching circles and printed works, he built one of the earliest and most successful online platforms for accessible religious guidance. IslamQA's positions broadly reflect mainstream Saudi Salafi scholarship, and the platform has become both heavily used and at times contested for its rulings on contemporary social issues; it has been blocked or restricted in several countries over particular fatwas. He continues to teach, write, and supervise the website's expanding international reach.