Ijtihad

SOURCE: http://www.dawn.com/news/1141821

The concept of ijtihad allows Muslims to interpret their beliefs according to the time and place they live in. This concept, however, has not been used for centuries.

‘Ijtihad’ is an Islamic legal term that means “independent reasoning”, which is used for defining an issue in a way that does not contradict the teachings of the Holy Quran and the Sunnah.

In Sunni Islam, ijtihad is recognised as a process of legal decision-making through personal effort. It is also accepted as one of the four main sources of law.

The person making such a decision is required to have a thorough knowledge of theology, revealed texts, legal principles and the Arabic language. Other qualifications include sincerity, goodness and intellect.

A person qualified to do so is recognised as a mujtahid, one who can make ijtihad.

Both words are derived from a three-letter Arabic root, J-H-D, i.e. struggle. Thus ijtihad is a process of “struggling with oneself” to interpret an issue through independent reasoning in the light of the revealed text and the instructions of the Sunnah.

In the early periods of Islam, Muslims saw ijtihad as an acceptable form of interpreting legal and social issues that an individual or a group faced.

Among the Sunnis, ijtihad was often interpreted as a scholar’s personal judgment of an Islamic law.

Among the Shias, ijtihad evolved into a practice of applying careful reasoning to uncover the knowledge of what Imams would have done in particular legal situations.

Besides sharing some requirements with the Sunnis, the Shias also required a mujtahid to receive further training at a ‘hawza’ or a religious centre.

Since Shias do have religious schools entitled to produce mujtahids, this tradition has continued unabated among them.

But among the Sunnis, there has been no undisputed mujtahid since the mid-tenth century. Yet, calls for a revitalisation of ijtihad have always been made, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, when the Islamic world confronted Western thoughts. This confrontation made many Muslim scholars realise the need to reinterpret religious laws to cope with modern concepts entering their thoughts.

The scholarly debate over ijtihad has been going on for well over 200 years and has produced some prominent revivalist thinkers such as Jamaluddin Afghani, a 19th century Iranian scholar, Mohammed Abduh, his Egyptian friend and reformer, and Mohammed Iqbal, a poet philosopher from the Indian subcontinent. These scholars also included Hasan al-Banna, Syed Qutb and Maulana Maududi, founders of Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and the Jamaat-i-Islami in the subcontinent.

Their works deal mainly with issues such as state and religion, individual and society, secularism and Islam. They had a major influence on Muslim thinkers, writers and political activists in the 20th century. Yet, they were generally accepted as scholars, not mujtahids.

But the need for a process to understand and interpret legal, social, economic and political issues of the modern world is felt at all levels.

 

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