Muslims who issue fatwas without understanding Islamic law are contributing to extremism and atrocities such as the 7/7 attacks on London, one of the Muslim world’s most senior scholars said yesterday.

“We have to be clear about what is at stake here,” Dr Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, told the Lancaster House conference. “When each and every person’s unqualified opinion is considered a fatwa, we lose a tool that is of the utmost importance to rein in extremism and preserve the flexibility and balance of Islamic law.”

The statement was one of the most uncompromising attacks by a senior Islamic scholar on Islamist extremism in recent years.

Dr Gomaa insisted that the pace of change in the past 200 years had made it essential for Muslim jurists and muftis to examine how everything worked. “The way in which Islamic law is applied must take into account this change.”

He said that Islamic law’s flexibility and adaptability was its greatest asset and that Muslims must answer the challenge of holding fast to an authentic, moderate and tolerant Islam “to stand in the face of those who would use our religion for their own agendas”.

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