Talk:Ijtihad/Archive 1

Ijtihad in sunni-islam and shia-islam
Is the separation of ijtihad in Sunni-islam and shia-islam necessary?

To me it seems the chapter concerning ijtihad in sunni-islam is far more specific than the one on ijtihad in Shia-islam, which seems to be a more general explanation/definition of ijtihad?

Besides: What's with the headline in the chapter on ijtihad in Shia-islam? right now it says Ijtihad in 12er Shi'a Islam. which hardly seems to be on purpose? Gregers 22:35, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

terminus technicus
WHAT is a terminus technicus? -- Zoe


 * terminus technicus (lat.): technical term. Easy, isn't it? In German it is a quite common foreign expression. But I'll change it if most English readers don't understand it ;-) --Elian


 * Please do. Most English readers don't speak Latin.  -- Zoe


 * Beg to differ - that phrase is so standard that most English speakers DO know it.--Doric Loon 15:02, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I support using "technical term" as the use of Latin here does not provide any greater precision or readbility. Haakondahl (talk) 08:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

This is an article in English Wikipedia.

It is very annoying and troublesome that articles about Islam are so replete with arabic words that english speakers cannot understand.

For example, I would like every instance of the word " ijma" to be replaced by the english word "consensus". As far as I can tell, there is no difference in meaning. The use of these foreign words amounts to obscurantism.

By the way, I studied Latin at school for 5 years. I can translate 'terminus technicus' with no difficulty; but this is the first time I have ever come across the phrase.

MrDemeanour (talk) 14:45, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

?

 * "usul al-fiqh" can you explain ?
 * Ericd


 * I think it means Origins of Jurisprudence, i.e. the origins of where laws come from

POV
"This resulted in the muslims entering the dark ages, where they have been ever since.". Um, that doesn't sound very NPOV, does it? 80.126.238.189 18:39, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * 80.126.238.189; Either they did or they didn't. Ijtihad only has meaning in modern discussion if they did. I encourage everyone to read this  wonderful article on the topic.
 * --Daelin 09:34, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Ijtihad
I think a more proper translation of "ijtihad" would be "(active) initiative" (as opposed to "(passive) imitation"). The basic meaning is "effort," without necessarily having the connotation of "an effort against s.o. or something." Ijtihad is a personal effort to make a rational determination about what is right to do under given circumstances, and as such resembles the European tradition of casuistry in some ways.

Edward Lane's definition

 * "... exerting the faculties (of the mind) to the utmost for the purpose of forming an opinion in a case of law (respecting a doubtful and difficult point); the seeking to form a right opinion; investigation of the law, or the working out of a solution to any difficulty in the law, by means of reason and comparison ..."

"Jihad"
I'm guessing that this is the same word most often rendered in English as "jihad". Am I mistaken? That spelling does not even appear in this article. I'm not interested in arguing over the article title, but assuming it is the same word, such a common spelling should certainly appear in the article. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:14, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)

No, it has nothing to do with jihad; both terms do come from the same verb "jahada", but have very different meanings. - Mustafaa 23:16, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * That itself would probably be worth explaining. Not at all obvious to those of us who do not speak Arabic. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:33, Nov 10, 2004 (UTC)


 * Given that one of the meanings of "jahada" is "meditate upon something" (according to Omar's "Dictionary of the Holy Qur'an") I think it's an error to maintain in the entry that ijtihad has nothing to do with jihad. It has nothing to do with WAR, of course, but then one can make the argument that jihad has nothing to do with that, either, at least as far as the Qur'an is concerned. (This is a topic of much interest over at jihad, but that's another story.) Anyway, I'd like to propose a rewrite that pointing out that the two words come from the same root verb, and that both touch on struggle, effort, and meditation. Thoughts? BrandonYusufToropov 00:38, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, and while you're at it, could you just explain how the form comes about - a  appearing in the middle of a word is odd. I know no Arabic, but I am guessing this is something like a Hebrew hithpael, where the prefix hith- gets added to a verb, and if the verb starts with sh- a metathesis takes place so that -thsh- becomes -shth-.  It would help me a lot to know if this is the same (it+jehad=ijtehad?) - it's easier to remember foreign words if you know what's happening in them.  --Doric Loon 15:02, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm still at kindergarten level with Arabic, but I can tell you that the words build from the beginning and the middle sometimes, not from the end as we might expect in English. So the root combination J-H-D can be manipulated in all kinds of directions, offering subtle variations on the initial concept, and permitting many orthographic liberties, including the present case. I don't know what the heck the "T" is doing in there, but I know the word derives from the root three-consonant pattern J-H-D. Here is a fair-use quote on the etymology:


 * "Ijtihad: Ijtihad has been derived from the root word Jahada. Ijtihad literally means striving or self-exertion. Ijtihad consists of intellectual exertion. Ijtihad is a very broad source of Islamic law and comes after the Quran and the Sunnah." (from http://www.ymofmd.com/books/uaf/taarud_and_ijtihad.htm) BrandonYusufToropov 03:40, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * See Arabic_grammar - the "t" comes in because Ijtihad is a form of stem VIII. --Elian 00:28, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Aha - exactly what I was after. I'll put that cross-reference into the article.  Thanks.  --Doric Loon 06:40, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I personally think the commn root verb should be ignored in the article. I only have a touris Arabic, but know Hebrew, and can tell you most ENglish speakers will misunderstand root verbs and what it meens that two words share a common root. They usually think "root verb" meens "what the word really meeans." TO get the real idea across it will take more sentances than its worth. Shia1 00:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Anon added article
Anon, cut-n-pasting a whole article is a copyvio. Giving that much space to one POV would also unbalance the entire article. If you want, put in a link to the online source where you found the article. Zora 06:53, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

re: ijtihad in shi'a islam
No it is certainly necessary to have Sunni ijtihad and Shi'a ijtihad separate. Unfortunately there really isn't much information here (yet), but there is an important distinction. With the Hidden Imam in Greater Occultation (ghayba) the Twelver Shi'a community cannot technically conduct ijtihad. The mujtahid have been said to be the representatives of the Hidden Imam on earth, but this is political doctrine that doesn't fall completely in line with historical Shi'ism and theological dogma. There are many hadith arguing this dissimulation (taqiyya) for the Shi'a community, but Shi'ites through history, such as Ayatollah Khomeini, for instance, make large cases for activist Shi'a government (thus created in Iran in 1979).see: Encyclopedia of Islam articles on id̲j̲tihād and mujtahid and Wilāyat-i faḳīh But it is true that this distinct Twelver section needs work in order to explain this stuff. A.J. 1844, 13 March 2007 Ajaime 23:49, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The article seems to be missing any discussion of Ijtihad among the Ismailis. Given that I just learned about the concept by reading an article by Irshad Manji, it would seem that some discussion of the Ismaili conception would be useful. --Saforrest (talk) 23:46, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, sorry for the above. It seems that Manji explicitly denies being Ismaili, and there are conflicting reports on whether she has any Ismaili heritage.  Still, the article could benefit from some discussion of how the Ismailis regard Ijtihad. --Saforrest (talk) 23:51, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Qualifications of a Mujtahid
How they came up with these set of criteria to accept someone to be scholar?

I don’t see any signature of them in Quran,except knowing Arabic language of Quran.

For me they are secular since has NO bases on Quran. Wael Faiez 14:42, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

mujtahid
Is this word relates to people that were fighting in Afghanistan as mujakhadeens? For trivia purposes:), the Russian called them simply as mujakhed or mujakhedi(plural). Now the name is common in Russian in relationship to Muslims outside of the former Soviet Union. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 01:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Mujtahed does not relate to mujhaadedin in meaning, but there is a relationship in its grammatical derivation. This similarity has to do with the Ism Faa3l concept in Arabic grammar. This grammatical rule governs the construction of nouns from their verbal roots. As noted above, jihad (جهاد)(Form III) and ijtihad (اجتهاد) (Form VIII) come from the same three-letter root (ج-ه-د). An Ism Faa3l is the active noun derived from a verb, i.e., "one who does/performs verb X." For verbs forms III and VIII, the Ism Faa3l is created by adding the letter meem (م, equivalent to M in English) to the beginning of the present tense form the the verb, sans any prefixes or suffixes (and by changing the internal voweling a bit, but we don't need to get into that). The present tense form of jihad, without any pre/suf-fixes in jaahed (جاهد). ٍAdding the letter meem to jaahed makes "mujaahed" (مجاهد). One of the two plural forms of mujaahed is mujaahedin (مجاهدين). So this translates as "one who struggles" or "one who performs jihad (be it greater or lesser)" or "freedom-fighter" (if you're Ronald Reagan and trying to drum up American support for jihadis in the 80s). So in the same way, add the letter meem to ijtihad's present form, jtahed (جتهد) and you gut mujtahed (مجتهج), so this literally translates to "one who performs ijtihad" and is therefor used as an official title for people accredited to perform ijtihad.

Long answer short, jihad and ijtihad come from the same root, j-h-d, and therefore the words for the people who perform each of these actions are also formed from the same root. Since these nouns are formed in a similar way for most verbs, you get the word for "one who does jihad" looking like "mujaahed" (or the more commonly seen plural, mujaahedin), and the word for "one who engages in ijtihaad" looking like mujtihad. Ohk321 (talk) 04:11, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Colgate University Islamic Jurisprudence Edits
Hello. Just wanted to let you all know that for a final project in an Islamic Jurisprudence course at Colgate University we will be contributing some edits to this page. We feel that this page requires some basic reorganization, more citations, and more depth. If you have any questions or concerns please let us know. We would really appreciate if you limit the amount of edits while we are conducting this project. Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely, The Colgate Crew Epenberthy14 (talk) 14:07, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Wahhabism and ijtihad
I am a bit perplexed by the comments I recently removed regarding Wahhabism and ijtihad. The text, describing the Saudi government as oppressive, is obviously a breach of WP:NPOV. What I found quite amateur is that the source did claim that Wahhabists view ijtihad as "sinful." If we take a general reading of the available reliable sources, we find that the Wahhabists are part of the latter-day (post Ibn Taymiyyah) Hanbali school, and thus their position toward ijtihad is the same as followers of the other three main Sunni schools of thought. It's easy to conclude that the comments grant undue weight to a rather odd characterization, as Azhar, a prime seat of Sunni learning (and opponent of the Wahhabi movement) also considers attempts to exercise ijtihad in the modern era to be sinful with the exception of a few more modern, progressive professors. Thus, the characterization is quite inappropriate and hence I have removed the comment. MezzoMezzo (talk) 10:10, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

The lead is very convoluted
I am a Muslim and struggling to make sense of what the lead is saying, and I already know what Ijithad means. What about the normal reader?--Inayity (talk) 14:23, 15 June 2013 (UTC)
 * You're right, the wording isn't very clear; the second half of the lead is unsourced as well. I would ask: does it need a source? Or can we remove it to cut down on space and work on improving the first half? Additionally, the comment that ijtihad is "one of the four sources of Sunni law" is inaccurate; ijtihad is a method for deriving laws from the sources, not a source itself. Would you agree to shaving off the second half and then working on clarifying the first half? MezzoMezzo (talk) 03:41, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah that would help, but also ijtihad needs a simplistic explanation. See explained for those not familiar with the term.--Inayity (talk) 09:08, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I have a secret: I use Wikipedia at my office at work doing my downtime. Many sites are blocked by the company's server, and that's one of them. Could you draft a quick redo of the lead based on that source (I'm assuming it's a reliable one)? MezzoMezzo (talk) 09:56, 16 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I will paste the text and you can offer an opinion. Someone more familiar with the topic would have to re-write the lead. ''Ijtihad, the dynamic principal of Islamic Law, helps to keep law ever fresh and capable of facing the challenges of new places and times. Sometimes ijtihad requires looking afresh at Islam's primary sources, the Qur'an and Sunnah, and reinterpreting them according to new circumstances. It may, also, entail going beyond the sources and introducing new legislation under the general framework of the primary sources. The usuli scholars who deal with the methodology of Islamic law define ijtihad as: "It is the mujtahid's exertion of maximum effort in seeking knowledge of the ahkam (rules) of the Shari'ah through interpretation."

This definition implies four main principles: (1) It is the mujtahid's effort that counts; a non-mujtahid's effort is of no consequence. (2) Effort must be exerted to the ultimate limits of one's ability. (3) Effort should be directed towards the discovery of shar'i rules. (4) The method of discovery should be based in the interpretation of texts, assisted by other sources.

Ijtihad is not exclusively Islamic. Secular legislators, also, make ijtihad by striving to make laws that conform to the public policies of their societies and advance its objectives. These objectives are often enumerated in their constitutions or bills of rights. Similarly, judges make Ijtihad by interpreting the law. In doing so, they are guided by the wording of the law; the legislators' intentions found in reports and speeches; and interpretations given by other judges in similar circumstances.'' (islamic city)--Inayity (talk) 17:14, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Present-day application
moved here til sourced, WP:OR


 * == Present-day application ==
 * There is a prevailing notion that the gates of ijtihad in Sunni Islam closed about five-hundred years ago. Yet, we can see in this present era that this is certainly not the case. Both Progressive and even some sects of more Radical Muslims have been championing ijtihad's prominence in our ever-changing and modernizing world. In order to examine ijtihad's implementation in the present day, it is crucial to observe both the Progressive Muslims and Conservative' standpoints on the matter.

--tickle me 19:39, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

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