Qiyas
&
Ijtihad

You know,

from the very beginning the Companions had to learn

how to extend their understanding of Shari'ah

into new areas of experience.

The Messenger couldn't be there

with each one of them every hour of every day.

He couldn't be everywhere and everywhen at once.

What if the Companions had to go to another town?

How could they make judgements about their behaviour then?

Well,

we know that first they would look to what they knew

of what had been revealed of God's Message,

and after that they would try to remember

whether Muhammad had dealt with the same problem.

But if there was no specific answer in those places, that was it,

they were on their own.

So then they just had to use their best judgement.

They had to use their brains

as well as their hearts and emotions,

and think again of the Message and the Messenger,

using their reason, known in Arabic as Ra'i

to search for analogies Qiyas

An analogy is describing something by comparing it to something similar,

and reason is what is used to keep analogies in bounds.

To keep them possible and permissible.

So in making judgements in new situations they would see if either

the Message or the Messenger had dealt with anything similar in any way.

But what if there still seemed to be no connection?

Well, then they had to make a real mental effort,

the mental struggle known in Arabic as Ijtihad,

solving their problems by using their imaginations.

They needed to use their imaginations

to form new and different links and bridges

between their lives and the Message and the Messenger.

But they also knew that imagination is slippery stuff.

Reason can't hold it down.

Reason likes to only allow what's possible,

blocking off all those side roads that lead to the impossible,

whereas imagination happily plays with the impossible,

the worlds of 'what if' that go on forever.

And we need imagination because reason is arrogant

and likes to think that it knows everything,

and wants to limit the world to what it knows.

But imagination is all about the unknown.

It is what we use to discover new and different ways to see ourselves and the worlds we live in,

searching for deeper or more subtle ways to understand our Creation.

And sometimes imagination comes up with new ways of seeing things

that reason ends up having to take on board.

What is imagined can become real in the world of the possible.

What was invisible can be named and become visible.

What was unknown can become known.

Which means that imagination is

not only slippery but dangerous.

Because defining what words mean

is to have power over the understanding of what is named.

Which is why we need to work out

how to keep imagination under some sort of control.

If reason can't limit it's possibility or permissibility, what can restrain the imagination?

Only the will, only self-restraint.

With no compulsion in the Deen,

what else can it come down to if not self-control?

So as the muslim world expanded around the globe,

embracing numerous different cultures,

these basic approaches to making legal judgements were used,

first looking to the Qur'an, then the known example of the Messenger,

then using qiyas and ijtihad.

From early scholars

to the various later established schools of law,

these approaches were discussed,

refined and defined.

And slowly over the years, the Shari'ah was formalised,

and on the way it took what had once been those everyday words

and used them as carefully defined terms within the law,

giving them technical meanings that were specific to the law,

rather than their original meanings.

So the language of Law became

separated from the language of everyday life.

And as the Law became linked with power

it slowly became more institutionalised,

and practising Law was only possible after years of specialised study,

eventually in institutions controlled by the state,

and so Ijtihad and Qiyas became ways of thinking

that people needed permission to use.

And those who want power will always try to control the law,

and in the history of the Shari'ah, there have been many times

when those who wished to challenge opinions

imposed upon them by those in power

were taking great risks,

and many well-known scholars of Shari'ah

spent time languishing in dungeons for their opinions.

At the same time there were jurists who for influence and prestige

would serve their rulers by looking for loopholes in the law,

writing chapters in law books devoted to

such loopholes and stratagems of avoidance.

And there again,

at the opposite extreme,

there were those who chose to take so strict a viewpoint

that the effect of their judgements was to alienate people from the Shari'ah entirely,

So by the time 400 years had passed since the time of the Messenger,

a number of people were concerned that things were getting out of hand,

and that all the main points of law had already been decided

after sufficient discussion, of course

and so they thought that it was time to close the gates of ijtihad,

and many consider them to have been closed ever since

until and including the present day.

But if we are going to talk of closing the gates of ijtihad,

I suppose we really have to consider a few things,

such as 'What do we really mean by 'ijtihad'?',

and 'Is the word's meaning now restricted to its definition as a legal term?'.

Did ijtihad ever actually have gates to close?

When did ijtihad start to be seen as having closable gates?

And if the imagination can have gates,

who says who has the right to close them?

Where does the authority of the gate-closer come from?

Is it possible for someone to claim control of someone else's imagination?

Perhaps all these questions would benefit from

the application of a little questioning imagination.