Al-Huda
Foundation, NJ U. S. A
the Message Continues ... 4/114
Newsletter for February 2011
Article 1 - Article 2 - Article 3 - Article 4 - Article 5 - Article 6 - Article 7 - Article 8 - Article 9 - Article 10 - Article 11 - Article 12
JIHAD’,
with its imbued wrong meaning, became a
notorious word in the West after 9/11. Terror
now has an overwhelming presence in parts of the
Muslim world, including
The ulema have repeatedly condemned suicide
bombing and terrorism as un-Islamic. Several
consultations and conferences of ulema from
different parts of the Islamic world have been
held to make it clear that violence has no place
in Islam. In March this year, prominent ulema
from several Islamic countries from Senegal to
Indonesia gathered at Mardin, Turkey and
unanimously rejected the medieval fatwa known as
the Mardin fatwa issued by Ibn Taymiyyah, saying
it has no place in the contemporary globalised
world which respects faith and civil rights. The
Mardin fatwa was quoted by Osama bin Laden to
justify his terrorist attacks. Followed by this,
on April 12, the highest religious Saudi body
denounced terrorism. This body issued a fatwa
denouncing all acts of terrorism and even
criminalized its financing. Those who finance
such acts are also part of the crime, it said.
Thus terrorists cannot find any justification in
Islam for their acts. Their very support base
has been knocked off. However, one can hardly
expect much impact of such fatwas on terrorists,
though they would certainly help wean away those
Muslims from terrorists who justify such attacks
on the basis of their religion. This is not a
small achievement.
Our attention must now shift from ‘jihad’ to ‘ijtihad’,
which means to strive intellectually to
comprehend problems facing the Islamic world and
find their solutions in keeping with the basic
principles and values enshrined in the Qur'an.
Ijtihad has been called by many scholars,
including Allama Iqbal, the dynamic spirit of
Islam and Islamic law. Ijtihad was very much a
living process in early Islam; its gates were
shut, many scholars maintain, around the time of
the sack of
Now that jihad in its new incarnation as
terrorism is being denounced by all prominent
ulema of the Islamic world, it is time the
practice of ijtihad was opened and a fresh
approach developed to solve the many legal and
social problems affecting Muslim societies
today. Blind imitation and stagnation have
become the bane of Islamic law. While changes
are taking place in the world around us, we
continue to imitate the pre-1258 jurists in the
religio-legal field. We are unable to think
afresh and derive inspiration from the Qur'an.
We keep on quoting only certain imams and
medieval authorities who have become more
sacrosanct for us than the Holy Qur'an. I
propose a few basic steps in developing a fresh
approach and throwing open the gates of ijtihad.
Firstly, at least a few ulema and Muslim
intellectuals (and there are many who have been
trained in the traditional Islamic literature of
tafsir, hadith and jurisprudence and who feel
the need for change) must show courage and come
forward to develop a fresh approach, defying
powerful vested interests manning the religious
establishment as it were. Secondly, we must
transcend all existing schools of Islamic law
and develop a unified law applicable to all
Muslims. This will also give greater meaning to
the otherwise hollow slogan of Islamic unity. It
does not mean that we reject all provisions of
existing schools of law but that we select from
all these that which is best in them and in
keeping with the Qur'anic principles and values.
Thirdly, a new ijma (consensus) should be
developed on issues that are peculiar to our age
and time. If the ulema could do it in the first
three centuries of Islam, why not us today? The
past ulema’s ijma was limited to their own
school; today in a globalised world a much wider
consensus across all Islamic schools of thought
will have to be developed. Modern means of
information and communication technology have
made it much easier.
In medieval Islamic jurisprudence they used
qiyas (analogical reasoning) and ijma, and both
are intellectual instruments to solve legal
problems. Why can’t we develop new analogies on
a global scale today? What passes on as divine
in the Sharia law is nothing but local,
culturally embedded elements and practices,
particularly of the Arab and Persian cultures,
as they existed centuries ago.
We must transcend all such elements and, like
the Qur'an itself, develop a more universal
outlook whilst formulating Sharia laws for our
own time. While the sources of Sharia cannot
change, Sharia laws must change based on the
enshrined principles of ijtihad and ijma for
them to be responsive to the needs of Muslims
today.
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