During his tenure as Grand Mufti, ‘Abduh permitted individual Muslims and the Egyptian state to receive interest from bank deposits (since he argued that the Riba prohibited by the Qur’an was only excessive usury, not simple interest itself) and issued controversial fatwas allowing eating non-Halal meat and the collection and display of artwork and statues depicting human beings (the fear that Muslims would lapse into idolatry no longer applied, he argued).
