Imam branch of Shiism
rejected the idea of the
infallibility of ijmaa. Instead, it was the 12th Imam
alone who could guarantee infallibility, which
means that Shii jurists had to strive to determine
what his opinion was for a particular question.
See also
aUthority
;
mujtahid
; s
haFii
, m
Uham
-
mad
ibn
i
dris
al
-; t
Welve
-i
mam
s
hiism
.
Further reading: Wael B. Hallaq, “On the Authorita-
tiveness of Sunni Consensus,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 18 (1986): 427–454; ———,
The
Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2005).
ijtihad
(Arabic: striving, exerting)
A technical term employed in Islamic jurispru-
dence (
fiqh
), ijtihad refers to the use of indepen-
dent judgment to arrive at legal rulings in matters
that are not explicitly addressed in the q
Uran
and
sUnna
. A scholar who engages in ijtihad is known
as a
mujtahid
. Both terms are related to the Arabic
word
jihad
(struggle, effort), suggesting that, like
jihad, not all people are qualified to undertake it,
that the effort must be directed to meet a specific
end, and that it is regarded as a virtuous endeavor
even if it should fall short of its goal.
For most of its history, Islamic law has been
an ongoing process of scholarly study, reflec-
tion, debate, and critical reasoning grounded in
dynamic historical and social contexts, rather
than a code of timeless, inflexible rules. Although
modern scholars have claimed that the so-called
gate of ijtihad was closed as long ago as the 10th
century, ijtihad has, in fact, been a key aspect of
Islamic jurisprudence for centuries thereafter. It is
often contrasted with taqlid (imitation, tradition),
which refers to acceptance of rulings reached in
the past by
Ulama
belonging to a particular legal
school or tradition, such as one of the four chief
Sunni legal schools. The two tendencies, ijti-
had and
taqlid, have sometimes worked together
and sometimes in opposite directions. Both have
played significant roles in the development of the
Islamic legal tradition. Taqlid helped preserve the
Muslim community’s memory of the sacred past,
while ijtihad helped it adapt to change and new
issues arising in the present.
In the first centuries of Islam, when the legal
tradition was only beginning to take shape in an
era of Arab-Islamic conquests, migrations, and
conversions, ijtihad was synonymous with ray,
individual opinion. Because the Quran did not
address all matters of consequence facing the
Muslim community after the death of m
Uhammad
in 632, and because the
hadith
were only begin-
ning to be collected and used for legal purposes,
Muslim leaders and judges often had the freedom
to resolve legal questions with their own indi-
vidual reason and discretion. These questions per-
tained to many areas of religion and life: worship,
family law, criminal penalties, commerce, and
warfare. The early legal authorities who supported
this method of jurisprudence were called People
of Opinion (ray). This relatively free ijtihad
resulted in the formation of localized legal tradi-
tions in the new Islamicate empire. Some legal
authorities feared that the basis of law in religion
might be lost if opinion (or ijtihad) was relied
on too much. Consequently, by the early ninth
century, the People of Opinion found that they
were opposed by the People of Hadith, who, after
the Quran, wanted to give priority to the sunna
of Muhammad and his companions, which was
derived from the hadith. The most famous leader
of the tradition-minded People of Hadith was the
Baghdadi jurist a
hmad
i
bn
h
anbal
(d. 855).
By the 10th century, ijtihad had gained a place
in all four of the major Sunni legal schools, but it
was more limited than in the earlier centuries. It
was considered a religious duty that had to be hon-
ored by jurists, but it was to be used only if there
was no precedent in the Quran, the sunna, or the
consensus (
ijmaa
) of the school in which they had
been trained. Within each school, the jurists were
ranked according to reputation, expert knowledge
in the law, and experience. Only the ones who
excelled in these qualifications, the mujtahids,
K 346
ijtihad
could exercise
ijtihad. The lower-ranking jurists
were not qualified to use ijtihad; they were only
to follow the traditional rulings honored by their
own school and those authorized by mujtahids.
Even so, Sunni jurists recognized that ijtihad did
not have the certainty that the Quran, sunna, and
consensus had and that it could lead to an imper-
fect or incorrect ruling. Jurists in t
Welve
-i
mam
s
hiism
accept the priority of the Quran when they
make rulings, but then they look to the infallible
pronouncements of the imams. In their view,
particularly in the U
sUli
s
chool
of Shii fiqh, the
mujtahid is a highly esteemed jurist who makes
rulings on behalf of the Hidden Imam until his
messianic return. Their rulings tend to hold more
aUthority
, therefore, among the Shia than the rul-
ings of Sunni mujtahids hold among Sunnis.
When the great Muslim empires of the 16th
and 17th centuries—the Ottomans, Safavids, and
Mughals—weakened and fragmented in the face
of a series of internal and external challenges,
reform-minded ulama sought ways to reverse the
process and restore Muslim governments and
societies to their former grandeur. In part, they
blamed the sorry state of affairs in Muslim lands
on what they considered the rigidity and irratio-
nality of the traditional law schools and overem-
phasis on taqlid. Proclaiming that the “gate of
ijtihad” had been closed in the 10th century, they
wanted it reopened so that it could play a more
important role in adapting the
sharia
to mod-
ern life and restoring Islam to its original form.
Among those calling for such legal reform were
early Salafis such as Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905)
and a variety of later jurists and intellectuals.
Leading obstacles preventing such reformers from
realizing their goals have been a lack of agreement
about guidelines for how to conduct ijtihad and
the introduction of law codes based on Western
law. Nevertheless, many educated Muslims today
support the idea of using ijtihad to adapt the
sharia to modern life, even if it means turning
away from rulings preserved in the traditional
legal schools. Some very independently minded
reformers argue that it should be the right for any
educated Muslim to use ijtihad to bypass legal tra-
dition and construct an Islam suited to individual
values and spiritual outlook.
See also
mUFti
;
reneWal
and
reForm
move
-
ments
; s
alaFism
.
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