The word literally means to exert. In the terminology of Islamic law it means to exert with a view to form an independent judgement on a legal question. The idea, I believe, has its origin in a well-known verse of the Qur'an — 'And to those who exert We show Our path.'6
We find it more definitely adumbrated in a tradition of the Holy Prophet. When Muʿādh was appointed ruler of Yemen, the Prophet is reported to have asked him as to how he would decide matters coming up before him. 'I will judge matters according to the Book of God,' said Muʿādh. 'But if the Book of God contains nothing to guide you?' 'Then I will act on the precedents of the Prophet of God.' 'But if the precedents fail?' 'Then I will exert to form my own judgement.'7
The student of the history of Islam, however, is well aware that with the political expansion of Islam systematic legal thought became an absolute necessity, and our early doctors of law, both of Arabian and non-Arabian descent, worked ceaselessly until all the accumulated wealth of legal thought found a final expression in our recognized schools of Law. These schools of Law recognize three degrees of Ijtihād: (1) complete authority in legislation which is practically confined to the founders of the schools, (2) relative authority which is to be exercised within the limits of a particular school, and (3) special authority which relates to the determining of the law applicable to a particular case left undetermined by the founders.8 In this paper I am concerned with the first degree of Ijtihād only, i.e. complete authority in legislation. The theoretical possibility of this degree of Ijtihād is admitted by the Sunnīs, but in practice it has always been denied ever since the establishment of the schools, inasmuch as the idea of complete Ijtihād is hedged round by conditions which are well-nigh impossible of realization in a single individual. Such an attitude seems exceedingly strange in a system of law based mainly on the groundwork provided by the Qur'an which embodies an essentially dynamic outlook on life. It is, therefore, necessary, before we proceed farther, to discover the causes of this intellectual attitude which has reduced the Law of Islam practically to a state of immobility.
1. We are all familiar with the Rationalist movement which appeared in the church of Islam during the early days of the Abbasids and the bitter controversies which it raised. Take for instance the one important point of controversy between the two camps — the conservative dogma of the eternity of the Qur'an. The Rationalists denied it because they thought that this was only another form of the Christian dogma of the eternity of the word; on the other hand, the conservative thinkers whom the later Abbasids, fearing the political implications of Rationalism, gave their full support, thought that by denying the eternity of the Qur'an the Rationalists were undermining the very foundations of Muslim society.9 Al-Naẓẓām, for instance, practically rejected the traditions, and openly declared Abū Hurairah to be an untrustworthy reporter.10 Thus, partly owing to a misunderstanding of the ultimate motives of Rationalism, and partly owing to the unrestrained thought of particular Rationalists, conservative thinkers regarded this movement as a force of disintegration, and considered it a danger to the stability of Islam as a social polity.11 Their main purpose, therefore, was to preserve the social integrity of Islam, and to realize this the only course open to them was to utilize the binding force of Sharīʿah, and to make the structure of their legal system as rigorous as possible.
2. The rise and growth of ascetic Sufism, which gradually developed under influences of a non-Islamic character, a purely speculative side, is to a large extent responsible for this attitude. On its purely religious side Sufism fostered a kind of revolt against the verbal quibbles of our early doctors. The case of Sufyān al-Thawrī is an instance in point. He was one of the acutest legal minds of his time, and was nearly the founder of a school of law,12 but being also intensely spiritual, the dry-as-dust subtleties of contemporary legists drove him to ascetic Sufism. On its speculative side which developed later, Sufism is a form of freethought and in alliance with Rationalism. The emphasis that it laid on the distinction of ẓāhir and bāṭin (Appearance and Reality) created an attitude of indifference to all that applies to Appearance and not to Reality.13
This spirit of total other-worldliness in later Sufism obscured men's vision of a very important aspect of Islam as a social polity, and, offering the prospect of unrestrained thought on its speculative side, it attracted and finally absorbed the best minds in Islam. The Muslim state was thus left generally in the hands of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses of Islam, having no personalities of a higher calibre to guide them, found their security only in blindly following the schools.
3. On the top of all this came the destruction of Baghdad — the centre of Muslim intellectual life — in the middle of the thirteenth century. This was indeed a great blow, and all the contemporary historians of the invasion of Tartars describe the havoc of Baghdad with a half-suppressed pessimism about the future of Islam. For fear of further disintegration, which is only natural in such a period of political decay, the conservative thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one point of preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous exclusion of all innovations in the law of Sharīʿah as expounded by the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social order, and there is no doubt that they were partly right, because organization does to a certain extent counteract the forces of decay.
But they did not see, and our modern ʿUlamāʾ do not see, that the ultimate fate of a people does not depend so much on organization as on the worth and power of individual men. In an over-organized society the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul. Thus a false reverence for past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a people's decay. 'The verdict of history', as a modern writer has happily put it, 'is that worn-out ideas have never risen to power among a people who have worn them out.' The only effective power, therefore, that counteracts the forces of decay in a people is the rearing of self-concentrated individuals. Such individuals alone reveal the depth of life. They disclose new standards in the light of which we begin to see that our environment is not wholly inviolable and requires revision.
The tendency to over-organization by a false reverence of the past, as manifested in the legists of Islam in the thirteenth century and later, was contrary to the inner impulse of Islam, and consequently invoked the powerful reaction of Ibn Taymiyyah, one of the most indefatigable writers and preachers of Islam, who was born in 1263, five years after the destruction of Baghdad.