Ahmed Mamdouh

Ahmed Mamdouh is an Egyptian scholar, one of the fatwa secretaries of Egypt's Dar al-Ifta, and one of its media faces. He directed the Dar's Sharia Research Department, served as fatwa secretary and coordinator of its transactions committee, and was honoured by Grand Mufti Shawki Allam in 2023 among the Dar's distinguished fatwa secretaries. He answers the public's questions in video fatwas the Dar publishes on its official channel, and in programmes on the Al-Nas satellite channel. The sources checked publish no birth date and no name fuller than "Ahmed Mamdouh", and this record is therefore deliberately brief. ¹

At a session of the Fatwa Secretariat committee chaired by the Grand Mufti, Shawki Allam, the Mufti honoured the Dar's distinguished fatwa secretaries, among them "Dr Ahmed Mamdouh, fatwa secretary and coordinator of the transactions committee", for their distinguished contribution to the highest performance rates; the report on the Dar's website is dated 2 March 2023. ¹

At an Arabic Language Academy symposium in Cairo titled "The Dramatic Treatment of the Prophets and Companions, between Permission and Prohibition", he spoke as director of the Dar's Sharia Research Department, saying that contemporary Muslim scholars agree that depicting the prophets in dramatic works is religiously prohibited, and naming among those who held this the al-Azhar fatwa committee, al-Azhar under Abd al-Halim Mahmoud, the Islamic fiqh academies of Makkah and Jeddah, the Islamic Research Academy and Dar al-Ifta; as for depicting the Companions, he said the fatwa excludes the ten promised paradise, the mothers of the believers and the Prophet ﷺ's household from permission. This is a presentation of a position reported from him in the Dar's report, not a ruling by the museum. ¹

At the Dar's pavilion at the Cairo International Book Fair he spoke as the Dar's fatwa secretary in a panel, "Fatwa and Social Media: Ifta in the Digital Age", on the challenges of spreading fatwas across digital platforms and the ways of correcting misconceptions. ¹

Egyptian press reports carry his answers to questions put to Dar al-Ifta in videos published on its official YouTube channel — among them his answer on supplicating and addressing God in colloquial Arabic — and his appearance answering questions on the Al-Nas channel programme "Ma'a al-Nas" (With the People). He is thus among the fatwa secretaries who have become familiar faces to the audience of recorded fatwa, without — in the sources checked — a personal channel of his own under his name. ¹

• Egypt's Dar al-Ifta official website: the report of the Grand Mufti's honouring of the distinguished fatwa secretaries (2 March 2023), the Arabic Language Academy symposium report, and the report of the Dar's Cairo Book Fair panel; checked 25 October 2026.