Strictness in fatwa turns people away from practising Islam!

Shaykh Dr. Hatim al-Awni, one of the leading scholars of our times, writes,

"As religiosity decreases, strictness in fatwa increases.

Some people might assume that later scholars are more lax in their fatwas than earlier ones, since earlier scholars typically had more taqwa, and were more cautious, than later ones.

But reality shows this assumption to be false! What we discover is that later scholars are actually far stricter in their religious fatwas than earlier ones, and I have demonstrated this in a recent post of mine in which I tabulated how the quantity of sins that were deemed to be 'major' increases as time went on. Earlier scholars viewed the quantity of 'major sins' to be far less than later scholars.

So what this demonstrates is:

1) Stricter fatwas doesn't necessarily translate into more righteousness and piety

2) Being overly strict is in fact a sign of deficiency in knowledge and fiqh, for how else can we explain that later scholars are stricter than earlier ones?!

And how beautiful is the statement of Sufyan al-Thawri: 'I judge true knowledge to be a trustworthy scholar understanding when to be lenient, for indeed, anyone can be strict!!'

3) Being strict in one's fatwa doesn't translate into somehow protecting the religion. Rather, being strict ends up harming the religion, since it turns people away from practicing Islam, and causes them to despair of Allah's Mercy."

Translated - with slight editing for meaning - from the Shaykh's Facebook page.