The question of ijtihad is a very topical one these days. Many people ask, either aloud or to themselves, what form ijtihad takes in Islam, and from where Islam got the concept. Why should one practice taqlid? What are the conditions for ijtihad? What are the duties of a mujtahid?

Broadly speaking, ijtihad has the meaning of being an authority in the matters of Islam; but there are two ways of being an authority and deriving opinions in the matters of Islam in the eyes of us Shii Muslims: one which is in accordance with the sharia, and one which is forbidden by it. Similarly, taqlid is of two kinds: one which is in accordance with the sharia, and one which is forbidden.

The kind of ijtihad which is forbidden by the shari'a.

Now, the kind of ijtihad which, in our opinion, is forbidden is that which means "legislating" or "enacting the law", by which we mean that the mujtahid passes a judgement which is not in the Book (the Qur'an) or the Sunna, according to his own thought and his own opinion - this is technically called ijtihad alra'y. According to Shii Islam, this kind of ijtihad is forbidden, but in Sunni Islam it is permitted. In the latter the sources of legislation, and the valid proofs for determining the sharia, are given as the Book, the Sunna and ijtihad. The Sunnis place ijtihad, which is the ijtihad alra'y explained above, on the same level as the Book and the Sunna.

This difference takes its origin in the fact that Sunni Muslims say that the commands which are given in the sharia from the Book and the Sunna are limited and finite, whereas circumstances and events which occur are not, so another source in addition to the Book and the Sunna must be appointed for the legislation of Divine commands - and that source is the very same as we have defined as ijtihad alra'y. Concerning this matter, they have also narrated hadiths from the Prophet, and one of them is that when the Prophet sent Muadh b. Jabal to the Yemen, he asked him how he would issue commands there. He replied: "In conformity with the Book." "And if it is not to be found in the book?" "I will make use of the Sunna of the Prophet." "And if it is not to be found in the Sunna of the Prophet?" "Ajtahidu ra' yi, " he replied, which means: I will employ my own thought, ability and tact. They also narrate other hadiths in connection with this matter.

There is a difference of view among Sunni Muslims as to what ijtihad al-ra'y is, and as to how it is to be conceived. In his famous book, the "Risala" which was the first book to be written on the principles of Islamic jurisprudence (usul alfiqh), (...) alShafii insists that the only valid ijtihad according to hadith is qiyas [reasoning by analogy]. Qiyas, briefly, is the taking into account of similar cases, and ruling in a case from one's own opinion by comparing it with these other similar cases.

But some other Sunni fuqaha [experts in fiqh, sing.: faqih] did not recognize ijtihad alra'y as being exclusively qiyas; they also counted istihsan ["finding the good" by one's own deliberations] as valid. Istihsan means to see, quite independently, without taking similar cases into account, what is nearest to the truth and to justice, and to give one's opinion according as one's inclination and intellect approve. Similarly with istislah [determining what is in the interests of human welfare by one's own deliberationsl, which means the seeming of one thing as more expedient than another, and taawwul in which, although a ruling may have been reached in one of the nusus [the textual bases for a precept of the sharia sing.: nass], in a verse from the Qur'an or in a hadith from the Prophet, one still has the right, for some reason, to dispense with the contents of the nass and to give priority to one's own independent opinion (ijtihad alra'y). Each of these requires explanation and a detailed account, and the ShiiSunni debate is relevant to such an account. Many books have been written both for and against this idea, viz., that ijtihad is on a par with textual evidence, and the best of them is the treatise written recently by the late Allama, the Sayyid Sharaf alDin, called "alNass wa lIjtihad".

Now, according to Shii Muslims, such a kind of ijtihad is not permitted by the sharia. In the view of Shii Muslims and their Imams, the first basic principle of this matter, i.e., that the rulings of the Book and the Sunna are not adequate and that it is therefore necessary to practice ijtihad alra'y, is not correct. There are many hadiths relevant to this discussion, and, in general, [they tell us that] there exist rulings for every eventuality in the Book and the Sunna. In "alKafi", after the chapter on bida [innovation] and maqa'is [measurements], there is a chapter with the title: "Chapter on referring to the Book and the Sunna - and there is no halal [permitted thing] or haram [forbidden thing] or anything which the people need which does not come in the Book or the Sunna." The Imams of the ahl albayt have been known since the earliest days as opponents of qiyas and ra'y.

Of course, the acceptance or nonacceptance of qiyas and ijtihad alra' y can be studied from two angles. Firstly, from the aspect from which I have looked at it; that is to say, we count qiyas and ijtihad alra'y as one of the sources of Islamic legislation, and place it alongside the Book and the Sunna, and say that there are cases which have not been ruled upon by revelation and which mujtahids must explain using their own opinion. Or alternatively, [we can study it] from the aspect that ( . . . ) qiyas and ijtihad al-ra'y [arel a means for deriving the real rulings, just as we use the other ways and means such as khabar alwahid. In other words, it is possible to perceive qiyas as either a substantive (mawduiya) [element in law], or a methodological (tariqiya) [principle].

In Shii fiqh, qiyas and ra'y are invalid in both of the above senses. In the first sense, the reason is that we have no ruling which is not given in the Book and the Sunna; and in the second case, the reason is that qiyas and ra'y are kinds of surmise and conjecture which lead to many errors. The fundamental opposition of Shii and Sunni legists in the matter of qiyas is in the first sense, although the second aspect has become more famous among the scholars of usul (the principles and methodology of fiqh).

The right of ijtihad did not last for long among the Sunnis. Perhaps the cause of this was the difficulty which occurred in practice: for if such a right were to continue [for any great length of time], especially if taawwul and the precedence of something over the texts were to be permitted, and everyone were permitted to change or interpret according to his own opinion, nothing would remain of the way of Islam (din alislam). Perhaps it is for this reason that the right of independent ijtihad was gradually withdrawn, and the view of the Sunni ulama became that they instructed people to practice taqlid of only the four mujtahids, the four famous Imams - Abu Hanifa [d.150/767], alShafii; [d.204/820], Malik b. Anas [d.179/795] and Ahmad b. Hanbal [d.241/855] - and forbade people to follow anyone apart from these four persons. This measure was first taken in Egypt in the seventh hijri century, and then taken up in the rest of the lands of Islam.

Ijtihad permitted by the shari'a.

The word ijtihad was used until the fifth hijri century with this particular meaning, i.e., with the meaning of qiyas and ijtihad alra'y, a kind of ijtihad which is prohibited in the eyes of the Shia. Up to that time, the Shii ulama included a chapter on ijtihad in their books only because they wanted to refute it, to emphasize that it was null and void, and to proscribe it, as did the Shaykh alTusi in some of his works. But the meaning of this word gradually extended beyond this specific meaning, and the Sunni ulama themselves began not to use 'ijtihad' in the specific sense of ijtihad alra'y, [as a source] which was on the same level as the Book and the Sunna. [Such a shift in the meaning of the word can be seen with] Ibn Hajib in his "Mukhtasar alusul", on which Adud alDin alIji wrote a commentary known as alAdudi, and which has been till recently, and maybe still is, the authoritatively approved book on [Sunni] usul, and before him with alGhazali in his famous work "alMustasfa". It then became used rather in the unqualified sense of effort or exertion to arrive at the rulings of the sharia, and was defined as "the maximum employment of effort and exertion in deducing the rulings of the sharia from the valid proofs (adilla, sing. dalil, see below ). However, it is another matter to decide what the valid proofs of the sharia are: whether qiyas, istihsan, and so forth, are among them or not.

From this time onwards, the Shii ulama also adopted this word because they accepted this [general] meaning. This kind of ijtihad was a kind approved by the sharia. Although the word had originally been one to be avoided among the Shia, after its meaning and the concept it denoted had undergone this change, their ulama, discarded their prejudice and subsequently had no reservations about using it. It seems that in many instances the Shii ulama, were careful to consider unity of method and conformity among Muslims as a whole. For example, the Sunnis came to recognize ijma (consensus of opinion among the ulama) as a proof leading to certainty, and, in practice, they also held it to be fundamental and substantive (mawdui) just like qiyas, whereas the Shia did not accept it. However, to protect the unity of method, they gave the name ijma to a principle which they did accept. The Sunnis said that the valid proofs were four in number: the Book, the Sunna, ijma and ijtihad (qiyas); the Shia said the valid proofs were four: the Book, the Sunna, ijma and aql (reason). They merely substituted aql for qiyas.

At any rate, 'ijtihad' gradually found a wider meaning, i.e., the employment of careful consideration and reasoning in reaching an understanding of the valid proofs of the sharia. This, of course needs a series of sciences as a suitable preliminary basis on which to develop the ability to consider and reason correctly and systematically. The ulama of Islam gradually realized that the deduction and derivation of the precepts from the combined valid proofs of the sharia necessitated [the learning] of a series of preparatory sciences and studies such as the sciences of literature, logic, the Qur'anic sciences and tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis), the science of hadith and the narrators of hadith (rijal alhadith), the science of the methodology of usul alfiqh, and even a knowledge of the fiqh of the other sects of Islam. A mujtahid was someone who was a master of all these sciences.

I think it extremely likely, though I cannot state this categorically, that the first person among the Shia to use the words ijtihad and mujtahid [positively] was the Allama alHilli. In his work " Tahdhib alusul'', he puts the chapter on ijtihad after the chapter on qiyas, and there he uses the word in the same sense in which it is used today.

[We can therefore say that] the ijtihad which is forbidden and rejected in the eyes of the Shia is ra' y and qiyas, which were originally called ijtihad, whether this is counted as a source of the sharia and as an independent basis for legislation, or taken as a means for deriving and deducing true precepts; whereas the ijtihad which they deem correct according to the sharia is that which means effort and exertion based on expert technical knowledge.

In answer to the question: what is the meaning, the use and the place of ijtihad in Islam, it can thus be said that it is ijtihad in the meaning that it is used today, i.e., competence and expert technical knowledge. It is obvious that someone who wants to refer to the Qur'an and hadith must know how to explain the meaning of the Qur'an, he must know the meaning of the verses, which verses abrogate which verses, which ones have clear meanings and which ones ambiguous meanings - and he must be able to distinguish which hadith is valid and authoritative and which not. In addition, he must understand, on the basis of correct rational principles, incompatibilities between hadiths to the extent that it is possible for him to resolve them, and he must be able to distinguish the cases in which the ulama of the Shia sect have consensus (ijma). In the verses of the Qur'an themselves, and similarly in the hadith, a series of general principles [for verification and interpretation] are laid down, and the use and exercise of these principles need training and practice, just as in the case of all other basic principles in every science. Like the skilled technician who knows which material to choose from all the materials available to him, the mujtahid must have proficiency and ability. In hadith, especially, there is a great deal of fabrication, the true and the false are mixed together; the expert must have the power to distinguish between them. In short, he must have enough preliminary knowledge so that he can exercise competence, authority and technical expertise.

Source: alshia