Islam between Extremes: Ijtihad Was a Vibrant Legal Process until the End of the Tenth Century
By Moin Qazi, New Age Islam
26 April 2017
In recent years, clichéd calls for reform of Islam have intensified. “We need a Muslim reformation,” “Islam needs reformation from within”, “An urgent need for reappraisal of Islam” are the usual headlines screaming through newspapers and airwaves. Reforms are needed across the crisis-ridden Muslim-majority world: political, socio-economic and, yes, religious too. But more important and urgent than that , Muslims need to rediscover their own heritage of pluralism, tolerance and mutual respect – embodied in, say, the Prophet’s letter to the monks of St Catherine’s monastery, or the “convivencia” (or co-existence) of medieval Muslim Spain.
What Muslims certainly don’t need are lazy calls for an Islamic reformation from non-Muslims and ex-Muslims, the repetition of which merely illustrates how shallow and simplistic, how ahistorical and even anti-historical, some of the west’s leading commentators are on this issue. It is much easier for them to reduce the complex issue to a series of clichés, slogans and sound bites, rather than trying to examine the root causes or historical trends of the present crisis engulfing present day Islam.
As Mohammad Yunus the well known columnist of New Age Islam has pointed out , there is a dichotomy of Islamic faith between its primary scripture, the Quran and its theological corpus (traditions and Sharia laws): one appearing at a point in time in history as an epicentre of faith, and the other evolving in its second century onwards .The former is constant, eternal and independent of history. The latter is shaped by historical factors: pre-Islamic faith of the incoming converts, theological orientation of the civilization, and scholastic methods of the era .If Islam is equated with the 'religion' (or worldview) espoused by the Quran -- it is universal, balanced, non-politica, gender-neutral, inclusive, pluralistic,, tolerant flexible and open ended -- albeit within broad boundaries, and emblematic of equality justice, liberty,, and other universal secular values.
The tragedy is that the Quran is still inaccessible to the majority of Muslims either on account of illiteracy or they resorting to self exclusion harbouring a notion that the Qur’an can be handled only by specialists .Most Muslims today know the message of the Qur’an from secondary sources which may not be totally reliable . The Qur’an addresses us directly. One of the most insistent commands in the Qur’an is: Think! Reflect! So the struggle to understand and interpret is our eternal challenge. There is no getting away from it. The field of Qur’anic studies is currently witnessing a vogue among scholars. This proliferation of scholarship is taking place at a time when no consensus exists on a central core of works to define the field let alone on a program to train future scholars
The Qur’an came to speak to all of humanity. However, it came to speak not in a vacuum, but within a historical context. Hence, its immediate objective was the moral and religious situation of the Arabs of the Prophet’s time. We must therefore recognize that although we can always hear the Qur’an speaking anew to our own particular situation, its own historical context must not be obscured behind its universal and timeless dimension.
Through the science of exegesis, in every age and in all Islamic languages, the Qur’an is kept alive as a force in the lives and cultures of Muslims everywhere. It remains relevant to every age through commentaries that are no longer limited to Arabic, or even other Islamic languages. Indeed, important Qur’anic commentaries have appeared in English and other European languages spoken by European Muslims as well. English in particular is fast becoming a significant Islamic language and the Islamic literature in English is growing at an exponential pace.
It is also a fact that words in the translated language are understood through a cultural history that may or may not totally in sync with the Qur’anic setting. For example, when the Qur’an chides the Kafir this can be translated as “infidel,” “one who rejects faith,” or simply “disbeliever” – just to mention some of the common translations of the word. Each translation implies something significantly different based on how we as English speakers understand these words with our own particular historical baggage.
More and more Muslims, with better literacy and education than their grandparents often had, are going back to the basic texts, and chipping at the cultural layers that have accumulated over the years. That process of challenging the old authorities has produced a whole range of new voices, from violent extremists to feminists. Many have found in the original basic text convincing and satisfactory solutions to present day realities. In fact there is a reasoned argument that Islamic jurisprudence has become an unmanageable creature.
Westerners tend to think of Islamic societies as backward- looking, oppressed by religion, and inhumanely governed, comparing them to their own enlightened, secular democracies. But measurement of the cultural distance between the West and Islam is a complex undertaking, and that distance is narrower than they assume. Islam is not just a religion, and certainly not just a fundamentalist political movement. It is a civilization, and a way of life that varies from one Muslim country to another but is animated by a common spirit far more humane than most Westerners realize.
Nor do those in the West always recognize how their own societies have failed to live up to their projected liberal frames. Moreover, aspects of Islamic culture that Westerners regard as medieval may have prevailed in their own culture until fairly recently. in many cases, Islamic societies may be only a few decades behind socially and technologically advanced Western ones. In the end, the question is what path leads to the highest quality of life for the average citizen, while avoiding the worst abuses. The path of the West does not provide all the answers; Islamic values deserve serious consideration. At the same time the fundamental truth which the entire scholastic world acknowledges is that just a few centuries back Islam was the cantle bearer to all the civilizations of the world. Historical circumstances have changed the balance.
Mores and values have changed rapidly in the West in the last several decades as revolutions in technology and society progressed. Islamic countries, which are now experiencing many of the same changes, may well follow suit. When this happens, there should be a change in how we approach the foundation texts that relate to those values. The Qur’an was revealed in a specific context, within the framework of a worldview that was appropriate to seventh-century Arabia, and in a language and symbolism that its audience understood.
Despite the importance of the socio-historical context for understanding the Qur’an, many Muslims view this dimension with suspicion. In general, Muslims believe the Qur’an is applicable at all times and in all places and circumstances, regardless of the differences in cultural context. Thus, for many Muslims, any discussion of the socio-historical context of revelation is a threat to the religion and its traditions.
Several scholars however feel that unless we recognize the importance of the socio-historical context of the Qur’an, our reading and understanding of it would be context-free to a large extent and may not help us in reaching out for the right guidance to our contemporary problems.
It is this socio-historical context that shows us how the text was received by the first generation of Muslims and in what circumstances. Appreciation of this will help us determine which areas of the ethico-legal content remain highly relevant to us today and which parts may have become somewhat less relevant.
For an Islamist, religion cannot be limited strictly to the realm of personal faith and private life: Islam has things to say about society and what it sees as the just political order. Unlike Christianity, Islam was concerned with politics and governance from the start: the Muslim rule that developed in the lifetime of the Prophet required attention to principles of community life, justice, and administration, relations with non-Muslims, defence and foreign policy. A vision of what constitutes good governance; law and a just society were among the principal new ideas. The Prophet came not to protect the status quo, but to reform and change. Women, for instance, were given legal status (where they had none before) and concrete legal protection within society.
In Islam, renewal and revolution continue to give it dynamism and life. Islamic fervour knows no national boundaries, no class differences, no racial barriers. Throughout history it has transcended them .It is important how people behave, how their customs, culture and society are organized, not who their ancestors were. Islam in the ideal believes in ‘nurture’ not ‘nature’; it transcends class and nation. The great modern scholar Fazlur Rahman writes in his book Islam and Modernity: “A historical critique of theological developments in Islam is the first step toward a reconstruction of Islamic theology. This critique should reveal the extent of the dislocation between the world view of the Qur’an and various schools of theological speculation in Islam and point the way toward a new theology.” This is a very important suggestion, which should have been considered very seriously and it would have benefited Islamic world immensely. For him it was the intellectual ossification and replacement of scholarship based on original thought by one based on commentaries and super-commentaries, the closing of the gate of Ijtihad, and basing of Islamic method solely on Taqlid (blind imitation) which led to the decline.
Rahman says: “Muslim scholars have never attempted an ethics of the Qur’an, systematically or otherwise. Yet no one who has done any careful study of the Qur’an can fail to be impressed by its ethical fervour. Its ethics, indeed, is its essence, and is also the necessary link between theology and law. It is true that the Qur’an tends to concretize the ethical, to clothe the general in a particular paradigm, and to translate the ethical into legal or quasi-legal commands. But it is precisely the sign of its moral fervour that is not content only with generalisable ethical propositions but is keen on translating them into actual paradigms. However, the Qur’an always explicates the objectives or principles that are the essence of its laws.”
The well known Islamic scholar from the west, Mohammad Arkoun is highly critical of the past and present conditions of Islamic thought, and of contemporary Islamic societies. He says that its spiritual transformative power over the hearts and minds of Muslims has been obscured. In his view, the spiritual essence of the covenant between God and man has been allowed to deteriorate into legal codes, rituals and ideologies of domination in the interest of religious and political elites. The great cultural achievements of the early Islamic era in bringing together Qur’anic revelation and Greek rational philosophic humanism have, he argues, long been abandoned.
Arkoun believes the Qur’an must be re-experienced as a religious revelation that brings about an inner transformation, and inspires a trust and devotional love of God that transcends all ritual, legal, communal and institutional forms. This renewal of revelation depends on a revival of the philosophic, scientific, humanistic Islamic culture of the classical era (a Muslim renaissance that would allow for a thinking of the hitherto unthought in Islam) and the assimilation of the industrial and information revolutions, with their modern social, scientific, theological and philosophical insights
Many scholars are strong proponents of Ijtihad, the process of arriving at new interpretations of Islamic law through critical reasoning, rather than blindly following the views of past scholars. When the Quran and Sunnah (the traditions and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) did not explicitly address an issue, or when conflicting statements were attributed to Muhammad, a qualified legal scholar could use independent reasoning to come up with a solution
Ijtihad was a vibrant legal process until the end of the tenth century, by which point many doctrines were settled by jurists representing the various schools of law. Around this time, influential orthodox Sunni Ulema (Muslim clergy with several years of training) began to argue against the process of independent reasoning, claiming that it could distort Islam. They instead advocated for a literal reading of religious texts. Reformers resisted, warning that a rigid interpretation of Sharia can be profoundly unhelpful in answering contemporary questions. But over the centuries, the literalists gained ground, leading to what some have referred to as a “closing of the gates of Ijtihad”
The reforms that took place in the early years of Islam are clearly progressive, changing with the needs of the society. However, the more detailed rules that were laid out by the classical jurists allowed many pre-Islamic customs to continue, and also reflected the needs, customs and expectations of the society in which they lived instead of continuing the progressive reform that was started during the time of the Prophet. The trajectory of reform begun at the time of the Prophet was thus halted in the medieval period through the selective codifification in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The colonial era has left deep scars. Rejecting the West, berating it for the shortcomings of our world, is seductive, an easy way out. We remain transfixed with the image of the aggressor, the predator; it is part of the colonial legacy. But it is time to turn our gaze inwards. We need to look at ourselves realistically, clinically; as we are not as we imagine we are. The post colonialist Muslim debate on the structure, functions, and goals of Islam in the contemporary world is a complex debate whose many participants formulate contradictory assessments and plans for action, often in tones of mutual animosity. What unites their voices is a shared vision of Islam’s contemporary situation as one of crisis, and also the conviction that Islam is an important-for many the most important -or even the only legitimate force of solidarity and cohesion in today’s world, and one that is now called upon to overcome the traumatic experience of Western colonialism and its legacy. Islam must combat the wrenching impact of alien forces whose influence in economic, political, and cultural permutations continues to prevail. For many religious thinkers, the goal to strengthen Islam through internal renewal (Tajdeed) is linked with the desire not to “suffer” modernity but actively accept and foster modernization, and to do so in a religious context that is in harmony with the indigenous culture. This, in turn, to many requires reinforcement as well as reformulation of the Qur’an’s divinely legislated spiritual, political, social, and economic moral values, since it is only when contemporary Muslims heed the call for equality, equity, and justice-as proclaimed and exemplified in Qur’an and Sunnah-that they can alleviate the harmful effects of Westernization and ensure that the Islamic world will once again be made whole.
The First World War ended with the defeat of the Ottomans, who had aligned themselves with the Kaiser. As the triumphant powers were discussing how to divide their booty, a Turkish nationalist force led by Kemal Pasha (later Ataturk) staked its claim to what is now Turkey, preventing the British from handing over Istanbul to the Greeks. For the first time in its history, thanks to Ataturk, Islam was without a caliph or even a pretender. Britain would have preferred to defeat and dump Ataturk, while hanging on to the Caliph, who could have become a pensioner of imperialism, kept for ceremonial occasions, like the last Mughal in Delhi before the 1857 Mutiny. It was the discovery of black gold underneath the Arabian Desert that provided the old religion with the means and wherewithal to revive its culture while Britain created new sultans and emirs to safeguard their newest and most precious commodity. Throughout the 20th century, the West, to safeguard its own economic interests, supported the most backward, despotic and reactionary survivals from the past, helping to defeat all forms of secularism. As we know, the story is unfinished.
Islamist modernists say that what matters is not the text but the context: many laws from the time of the Prophet were appropriate for those times, and to understand Islamic law, one must look at the context in which they were formed. Today, they say, one must reinterpret those laws and rulings in light of contemporary circumstances
Interestingly, one of the key centres of Islamic modernism is in the West itself where Muslims now have complete freedom for the first time to research and discuss a whole variety of ideas about Islam and propagate them via books, television, conferences and Internet - all impossible or forbidden at home. Today’s Islamist leaders are not usually clerics; often they are Western-educated engineers and doctors whose vision of an Islam-oriented future includes modernism and technology.
The modern world is incredibly different from what it was during the early centuries of Islam and the medieval era. The example of progressive reform from the beginning of Islam must be used to address the needs of the people today. Islam did provide superior justice for women, till the early medieval era but the trajectory was halted.
A Muslim has free will and the power to rebel and surrender. Thus, he or she is responsible and the maker of his or her own image. “Every soul is held in pledge for what he earns.” (Q74:38) “And the human being shall have nothing but what he strives for.” (Q53:30)
For Muslims therefore, it is a good time to pause, to reflect, and to attempt to re-locate the main features of, to re-discover, Islam. God says in the Qur’an that a people’s condition will not be changed until they change what is in themselves (Q13:11) We therefore take stock, not because we have arrived at any significant stage of the Islamic journey but because the sheer range of trajectories and approaches, and consequent confusion, obliges us to attempt clarification. The problem is not that there are too few answers but that there are too many. To put it in the words of the Qur’an: Those who listen to the Word and follow the best (meaning) in it: those are the ones whom Allah has guided and those are the ones endued with understanding. (Q39:18)
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Moin Qazi is the author of the bestselling book, Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He has worked in the development finance sector for almost four decade.
URL: https://newageislam.com/ijtihad-rethinking-islam/islam-between-extremes-ijtihad-vibrant/d/110915
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