[k2blader]

An "Islamic leader" isn't clergy? Please explain.

Does that mean a Muslim woman with a sense of leadership could step outside of her house and say, "I declare a fatwa on blah blah blah," and people around her would listen?

[Destro]

Reads like some Protestant views on the priesthood to me:

In Islam there’s no church as an institution as such, there’s no clergy. Islam doesn’t accept the notion that a particular group of people can claim for themselves to be representatives of God on earth. The entire human race is regarded, in a sense, as representatives of God on earth.