Ijtihad: Need and Practise

Time changes. And changes bring about new developments which cause the coming into being of new ideas and new thinking. A new thinking is not necessarily a result of man’s love for fashion which changes colour every now and then. In fact, new thinking is often required to preserve sanity in a world besotted with irrationality. It is required to remain relevant in a world changing its face and shape beyond recognition. It is also needed to adapt existing things and ideas to new developments, reform them if necessary and protect them from becoming out-dated.

The new thinking would not descend from the sky. It is the human mind which has to create it for the wellbeing of man and the world. This is what we call ijtihad, exercising one’s mental abilities to find solution to a problem about which the Quran and the Sunnah have not spoken clearly and unambiguously. Ijtihad has to be a living reality to keep the Muslim mind alert to new developments and explain the true Islamic position on them.

There are some key terms in the Islamic order which must be understood properly. These are ummah, shariah and khilafah. Ummah is the social order that binds together the world community of Muslims; shariah and khilafah signify its legal and political orders respectively.

Shariah is very important here. Literally it means the path that leads to a watering place or a source of water in the desert. Shariah to the Islamic ummah is what water means to a thirsty man in the desert. In the Islamic parlance it is the divine law derived directly from the Quran and the Sunnah. There are things about which the Quran and the Sunnah have given clear instructions which are binding upon every believer. But there are areas, relating to social, legal, cultural and political matters of the ummah, about which the Quran and the Sunnah have given only general instructions and left the details to be decided by the Muslim themselves. Thus the human mind had to be involved from the very beginning to apply the shariah in the life of the ummah. The exercise of mind to understand, interpret and apply shariah in life is ijtihad, and the rules and regulations which have evolved over the centuries, and would continue to evolve in future, because of ijtihad are known as fiqh. Thus fiqh is the result of human attempt to understand, interpret and apply shariah in life. Shariah, based only on clear instructions of the Quran and the Sunnah, is divine whereas fiqh is human and therefore liable to changes, reform and reinterpretation.

Unfortunately the long intellectual slumber that the ummah had fallen in almost closed the door of ijtihad leaving no choice for people but to follow one or another school of fiqh developed in the distant past. With ijtihad having been banished from our social and political life and collective consciousness, fiqh came to acquire a near-divine status which can not be interfered with. Worst, people became prisoners of one or another school of fiqh and thus developed the unhealthy, even un-Islamic, attitude of rigidity and blind following. Many began even to think, at least practically, that doing any thing outside their particular school of fiqh would excommunicate them from the fold of Islam.

Fortunately things began to change, slowly and gradually, after the world of Islam was swayed over by Europe’s colonial forces. Sections of people, at least, gave a call to return to the Quran and the Sunnah. The need for ijtihad to interpret Islam in the modern context began to be emphasized. For many people it has indeed been difficult to give up their addiction for one or another school of fiqh but what is satisfying is the fact that a good number of ulama seem to have thrown off the yoke of rigidity. Instead of turning to old books of fiqh, they now do tadabbur, delve deep, in the Quran and the Sunnah, apply their own mind and try to solve the problems thrown up by the modern age. Slowly but steadily, ijtihad is coming alive which holds the hope for the future of Islam in the world.

While highlighting and emphasizing the need for ijtihad, many people, consciously or unwittingly, undermine the importance of fiqh. It were the followers of fiqh who became rigid and gave up ijtihad and thus made it dormant, even lifeless. Therefore, the fault lies with the Muslim mind, and not with fiqh. Even the old fiqh, if studied properly, would prove to be the mother of many of the social sciences that we have today. Moreover, the results of our modern ijtihad would ultimately acquire a name, as did fiqh in the past. It is, therefore, advisable to be judicious and make a distinction between the fiqh and the rigidity of its followers. It is easy to highlight the need and importance of ijtihad but doing it practically would be a difficult intellectual exercise to undertake. A Mujtahid is required not only to have the greatest and deepest insight in the Quran and the Sunnah, as well as in the principles of fiqh, but he should also have the clear and thorough understanding of his time. As men with such insight, intellectual depth and encyclopedic knowledge are rare, the practical solution has been to hold joint meetings of traditional scholars and modern men of letter. This may be accepted as a temporary arrangement but it should not be allowed to continue as such for ever. There is no such cleavage as sacred and profane or religious and secular in Islam. The Islamic concept of knowledge is indivisible and Islamic men of letter must be the ones who have a thorough and in-depth understanding of the shariah as well as of the time they are living in. Only such Islamic men of letter, the ulama in the true sense of the word, are entitled to do ijtihad.

Another important, practically the most required, thing is that a thorough and broad-based knowledge alone would not work. It must be tied up with taqwa, the sincerity of purpose and responsibility which flows from the love-fear of God.

[January, 2007]