Early American Muslims adjudicated heresy disputes by appealing to Cairo scholars.

Evidence

Missionary Satti Majid disagreed. He thought that the group was heretical and wrote to scholars at al-Azhar seminary in Cairo to obtain a fatwa, or learned religious opinion, which condemned the group. In this moment of transnational exchange, Muslim Americans and Muslim visitors looked beyond US borders to appeal to Islamic authority abroad in setting the limits of Islamic authenticity in the United States. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 385