God Arises
Religion and Society
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legal or theological question by a religious scholar.
This does not involve digression from the basic
principles and, as a method of attaining to a certain
degree of authority for the purpose of inquiring into
the principles of jurisprudence, it has been
sanctioned by the Traditions. The word
Ijtihad
literally means ‘extortion’ and it is interesting to see
how it applied to an actual situation in the time of
the Prophet. When Mauz bin Jabal was on the point
of leaving for Yemen to take over as a governor of
that province, the Prophet asked him how he would
judge matters. “With the help of the Quran.” was
his reply. The Prophet then asked him what he
would do if guidelines were not to be found in the
Quran. Muaz replied that he would consult the
Sunnah
,
or sayings and deeds of the Prophet. “And
what,” the Prophet asked,” if you do not find the
necessary guidelines in the
Sunnah
?” “Then,” said
Muaz, “I will exercise my own judgement to the
best of my ability.
I am prepared to admit that making claims about
the effectiveness of
Qiyas
and
Ijtihad
is, from the
academic point of view, a matter of great
complexity. But I must stress that the reason for this
