Reviving Ijtihad

The Importance of Ijtihad Ijtihad is not merely an intellectual exercise; it is one of the most vital needs of the Muslim community. Through ijtihad, Muslims reaffirm their religious identity in every era. By reapplying Islam to changing circumstances, they demonstrate that Islam is an eternal religion, as relevant in contemporary times as it was in ancient ones. In essence, ijtihad serves as a means to continually update Islamic thought, ensuring its relevance to the present day. What is Ijtihad? Ijtihad does not mean forming opinions arbitrarily. Rather, it involves reflecting and pondering on the Quran and the Sunnah (the authentic sources of Islam) and deriving new Shariah rules through qiyas (analogy) or istimbat (deductive inference). In essence, ijtihad is also a type of taqlid. While an ordinary muqallid (one who engages in taqlid) follows the opinions of the fuqaha (Muslim jurisprudents), the mujtahid (one who engages in ijtihad) follows the guidance of God and the Prophet by directly reflecting on the Quran and Hadith, deriving rules by inference. The term ijtihad refers to the same intellectual process described as istimbat (inference) in the Quran (4:83). In the terminology of the fuqaha, this process is also known as qiyas. The Quranic commentator Al-Qurtubi wrote: “Istimbat in the Arabic language means istikhraj, and it indicates ijtihad when texts and consensus are absent” (Al-Jami’ li Ahkam al-Quran, Vol. 5, p. 292). This means that istimbat