Ijtihad (Independent Reasoning in Islamic Law)

Before and after the 13th century

During the formative and classical periods of Islamic law, ijtihad was something that competent scholars of Islam (and, in the earliest years, Muhammad's companions) regularly undertook, as Islamic legal theory and the major schools of Islamic law (Madh'habs) were still developing. Consequently, with little no precedence on legal matters, scholars would create this precedence by issuing new rulings, and ijtihad was a relatively common phenomenon. The inflow of new and challenging ideas, particularly those of the ancient greek philosophers, kept things from altogether settling into stone for at least a couple centuries.

By the 13th century, however, it is said that the "gates of Ijtihad" were closed. This was, of course, not a concrete development, but rather the general feeling that, since legal theory and judgements (ahkam) regarding all (at the time) plausible legal scenarios had been charted by the four madhabs, there was no substantially new work needing to be done. Moreover, in a manner of golden-age thinking (the centuries prior to the 13th century are often referred to as "the golden age of Islamic law"), subsequent Islamic scholars began to develop a special reverence for the prolific scholars of these earlier centuries, and started to feel as though their contemporaries lacked the competence and broad authority required to issue new judgements that disagreed with their predecessors.

the 13th century did not result in an absolute cessation of new ideas in the field of Islamic law, but marked a peak whereafter begun a decline. Further confirming and perpetuating this decline in ijtihad was the fact that the likes of al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya had, by this point, written several influential works condemning and "dismantling" the ideas of the Greek philosophers. Coupled with and confirming the "closing of the gates of ijtihad", this decline of Islamic philosophy ensured that future generations would be marked with an increasing rigidity and obsession with past legal precedence.

Modern period

Wahhabism, Salafism, and Islamism

Starting with Ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century, helped begin what is today known as salafism. This movement essentially advanced the idea that conformity with the formal jurisprudential methodology of the classical schools of Islamic law stifled an adherence to the words and plain meaning of the Qur'an and sunnah.

More important than the specific branch of Salafi thinking that Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's ideas would evolve into was the general notion that new, original interpretations of Islam core scriptures was possible, and that the classical schools of law had not only outgrown their initial usefulness, but had begun to undermine Muslims' loyalty to Islam's scriptures through their alleged idolization of scholars of Islamic law.

This departure from tradition would enable a wide array of new developments in Islamic though, ranging from the most literalist and fundamentalist to the most modernist and universalist readings of Islamic scripture, as the interpretive theories of of the classical madhabs begun to lose their monopoly on authority.

What was unique to Salafis beyond just their rejection of inherited tradition, was the belief that the way to reform Islam was to go back to its earliest source and focus intensely on the literal meanings of the revelation and writings that comprised it.

Islamic Modernism

Starting near the middle of the 19th century, reform-oriented Islamic scholars like Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and Muhammad Abduh began to promote the idea that there was something about classical Islamic law that needed reforming in order to accommodate a newly globalized and modernizing world. These thinkers, rather than fighting the surge of modernity, sought to take Islamic law along for the ride by tweaking it to make both more flexible and more focused on its basic universal values than on now-ancient interpretive methods. In this critical mood towards the classical schools of Islamic law, the modernists were similar to the Salafis.

The Modernists differed from the Salafis, however, in the direction they wanted to move in. Agreeing that rigid conformity to classical legal theory was a problem, the modernists decided the right thing to do was not to prefer literal readings, but instead to further abstract Islamic scripture and focus on the general "goals of the Shariah" (Maqasid al-Shariah). There being some precedence for this in the classical schools of law, many modernists decided that rather then throwing out the madh'habs altogether, one could emphasize and focus on the existing legal principles that favored high-level goal-oriented thinking and flexibility (such as Istislah, Istihsan, and Maslaha) while under emphasizing the legal principles that required a more rigid and uncompromising loyalty to the exact words of scripture.

This modernist movement grew into several new branches in the 20th and 21st centuries, and today even consists of a feminist Islam^[1][2][3], a liberation-theology Islam^[4], and a Marxist Islam^[5] - though these are still on the fringe of the more central modernist movement^[6][7] that focuses more exclusively on what it sees as specific problems in the Islamic legal heritage rather than new-fangled (and usually western-philosophy-inspired) solutions.

Today, while mainstream, traditionalist scholars of Islam have for the most part rejected the total vision of the likes of Abduh, et. al., many prominent traditionalist scholars and institutions (including al-Azhar) have decided to embrace the modernists as an indication that some basic sort of change or "reopening of the doors of ijtihad" must take place if Islam is to survive into modernity and beyond. That is to say, while the modernists themselves have failed to attain widespread purchase, they have acted as an effective (if still underwhelming) catalyst and thorn in the side of traditionalists forcing, perhaps unwillingly, the simple acknowledgement that something is amiss.

• Shariah - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Shari'ah