Blogger Scott Yorke today issued a “fatwa” against Otago University academic Professor Andrew Geddis.

Mr Yorke said he had issued the edict to “take my revenge on that dirty thief.”

Yorke said he had been forced to act after Geddis stole one of his blogpost ideas.

“I’d just come up with the idea of a killer blogpost satirising the government’s crackdown on beneficiaries,” said Yorke. “In this post the government was going to announce a crackdown on people assisting tax dodgers. I had the whole thing thought out, and it was going to be my most brilliant work yet.

“And then, just as I was about to write the thing out, I discovered that Professor Geddis had beaten me to it.”

Yorke said he had become overwhelmed with emotion upon discovering Geddis’ post.

“As I read his hateful work I began to feel a sudden dizziness and an urgent desire to listen to Elton John’s Greatest Hits 1976-1986. I get the urge to put that album on whenever I begin to experience any sort of strong emotion. It’s an urge I can’t control, and it’s one that almost ruined my wedding day.

“I only began to calm down after I’d listened to Little Jeannie, and by the time the album finished with Nikita I was left with a terrible sadness as I contemplated a love that could never be.”

Yorke said he had been left shocked at the brazen theft of his idea.

“I always knew that Geddis guy was a bit suspect, but I never dreamed in a million years that a law professor would actually go inside my head and steal my ideas.”

The Auckland blogger said he had spent hours trying to work out how Geddis did it.

“I don’t know how he got inside my head,” said Yorke. “But I’m guessing he has friends in one of the science departments at Otago University, and they somehow used a device to pick through my brain and locate my thoughts. I saw something similar on Doctor Who once.

“I’ve gone through every other potential explanation, and it’s the only one that makes any sense.

“I feel violated.”

Yorke admitted to having been tormented by law professors in the past, as a young law student.

‘We had a National government back then too, funnily enough. Geddis claims to be all liberal and lefty, but I can connect the dots. This was definitely a sabotage operation run from the ninth floor of the Beehive, and it has the dirty hands of John Key’s spin merchants all over it. Shame on you, Geddis for selling out!

“They’ve been trying to silence me for years, but I’ll go down fighting!”

Yorke’s “fatwa” calls upon Professor Geddis’ students and colleagues to make life difficult for the academic in “numerous but little ways.”

“I’m not advocating serious violence or criminality, not because the idea-thief doesn’t deserve something bad to happen, but because I wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me in any sort of legal bother,” the text of the ruling states.

“So attack him with custard pies, call him rude names, and if you see him in his car make sure you cut him off. Or if he’s a pedestrian refuse to stop for him at a zebra crossing.

“If you’re walking behind him just start giggling. If enough people keep giggling behind his back he’ll develop a complex, and maybe his head will explode, and I’m pretty sure a law professor with an exploded head would be an unemployed one, and wouldn’t that be sweet revenge for his idea-thieving?”

Religious experts have questioned the validity of Yorke’s “fatwa”, on the grounds that a fatwa is a ruling on Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar, whereas Yorke’s “fatwa” appears to be little more than a plea by a self-confessed atheist for people to harass and intimidate another person.

“It’s just a stunt,” said prominent Islamic cleric Kaukab Noorani Okarvi, “and not a very funny one. What a childish thing to do. This is a grown man, yes?”

But Yorke remains defiant.

“I can call it a fatwa if I want to. Are you going to try and stop me? Do you know what I did to the last person who tried to stop me? No? That’s because he was never heard from again.

“Now get me an ice cream, or you’re next on my list!”