'Ijtihad' in the Shi'ah Tradition:
Until the fourth/tenth and the fifth/eleventh centuries we observe that whenever the word is used by a scholar it carries the sense of qiyas and ra'y. For instance, Shaykh Abu Ja'far al-Tusi (d. 460/1067), in his 'Uddat al-'usul, devotes a chapter to qiyas. He devotes another chapter to Ijtihad where he discusses one of the issues related to ijtihad, i.e. the problem of taswib and takhti'ah. The book has another chapter entitled "Did the Prophet practise ijtihad, and whether it was legitimate for him to practise it? Was it legitimate for the Companions of the Prophet to practise ijtihad when they were away from him or were in his presence?" Later, in the course of his discussion, he says: "This controversy is basically uncalled for according to our doctrines, because, as we have proved earlier, qiyas and ijtihad are absolutely impermissible in the Shari'ah. ''
This remark of al-Shaykh al-Tusi shows that until his age the word Ijtihad was still used in the sense of ra'y and qiyas.
'Ijtihad' lexically means 'putting in utmost effort' in doing something. In the earliest days, the term in accordance with the traditions ascribed to the Prophet (S) and the Companions, was taken to mean ijtihad bi al-ra'y, or putting in utmost effort in the exercise of ra'y and qiyas. However, gradually it took a wider meaning and came to mean putting in utmost effort in discovering the laws of the Shari'ah from its reliable sources. Thus we see that al-Ghazali (d. 505/1 111) in his al-Mustasfa - although he uses the word recurringly in its earlier sense of qiyas, for instance, when he says:
They have differed as to the permissibility of practising qiyas and ijtihad during the days of the Prophet ... (vol. 2, p. 354)
He also uses it in the general sense of scholarly effort on the part of a faqih
It (ijtihad) means putting in of the utmost effort in doing something. But the term has come to be used in the terminology of scholars specifically for the mujtahids putting in of the utmost effort in acquiring the knowledge of the laws of the Shariah. (vol. 2, p. 350)
From this time onwards we see that the term is used less frequently in the special sense of ra'y and qiyas and takes on the sense of scholarly effort in discovering the laws of the Shari'ah. With this change, the term found way into the Shi'ite fiqh also, for earlier the Shi'ah had opposed it on account of their opposition to Ijtihad bi al-ra'y, not because they were opposed to scholarly diligence. In any case, they did not resist its use after it changed its meaning. Probably the first to use this term among the Shi'ah Imamiyyah scholars was al-'Allamah al-Hilli (d. 726/1326), who accepting it used it in its second sense in his work Tahdhib al-'usul. In that work he devotes a chapter to Ijtihad and uses it in the sense current today. It seems that it was from this time that the Shi'ah accepted the word or the word embraced Shi'ism.
We said earlier that the opposition to qiyas was not limited to the Shi'ah and there were schools among Sunnis who either altogether rejected it and regarded it as a heresy or avoided it as much as possible. The Mu'tazilah, who advanced the doctrine of al-husn wa al-qubh al'aqliyyan, backed qiyas and ra'y in their fight against the Ahl al-Hadith who rejected it. The Ahl al-Hadith, who later came to be called Asha'irah due to their approach in kalam, rejected the doctrine of al-husn wa al-qubh al-'aqliyyan, claiming that the desirability or undesirability of things is derived from the commands and prohibitions of the lawgiver and not vice versa. As a result, they denied reason any role in legislation of Divine laws. The controversies between the Mu'tazilah and supporters of qiyas and ra'y on one side and the Asha'irah and the Ahl al-Hadith on the other side revolve around the role of reason and its share in legislation.
It must not be concluded from the above discussion that the Shi'ah opposition to ra'y and qiyas was also based on the same reasons as those of the Asha'irah and the Ahl al-Hadith, which was outright opposition to the role of reason in deduction of the laws of the Shari'ah. The Shi'i opposition to qiyas and ra'y had two reasons. The first was that the claim of the supporters of qiyas that the Book and the Sunnah are not adequate sources of legislation was not acceptable to the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt (A). In the sermons of the Nahj al-balaghah and other Shi'i compilations of hadith the idea that the Book and the Sunnah are not adequate has been vehemently rejected. In the Usul al-Kafi, the chapter followed by another entitled:
The chapter about referring to the Book and the Sunnah, and that verily there is no haram or halal and nothing needed by the people that is not present in the Book or the Sunnah.
The second reason advanced by the Shi'ah against qiyas was that it was based on conjecture and led very frequently to error. These two reasons clearly stand out in the books of early Shi'ah scholars, and we shall abstain from further details for brevity's sake.
The best evidence of the fact that the Shi'ah opposition to qiyas and ra'y was not based on a hostility to the role of reason in canonical matters is that, from the very beginning that the Shiah jurisprudence was committed to writing, reason was considered one of the sources (adillah) of law. The Shi'ah jurisprudents stated that the sources of the Shari'ah are four: the Book, the Sunnah, ijma' and 'aql (reason), whereas the Zahiris and the Ahl al-Hadith confined the adillah to the Book, the Sunnah and ijma', and the support'ers of ra'y and qiyas regarded them as four: the Book, the Sunnah, ijma' and qiyas.
The Shi'ah jurisprudents, while opposing qiyas and ra'y, accepted the Mu'tazilah viewpoint about the rational basis of ethico-legal judgements, defended it and did not oppose it like the Asha'irah and the Ahl al-Hadith. The concurrence of views between the Shi'ah and the Mu'tazilah regarding this doctrine and its corollaries - such as the doctrine of Divine justice - led the Shi'ah among the Mu'tazilah to be known as 'Adliyyah and the Shi'ah left behind the Mu'tazilah in their support of the doctrine of Divine justice. As a result, it came to be said in scholarly circles that: "justice and tawhid are 'Alawid and fatalism and anthropomorphism are Umayyad."
The reason for calling justice 'Alawid was that the supporters of the Ahl al-Bayt (A) were also defenders of the doctrine of al-husn wa al-qubh al-'aqliyyan and the doctrine of justice was a corollary to it. As to tawhid being 'Alawid, it was on account of the belief in the unity of Divine Essence and Attributes. The Umayyads supported jabr (fatalism) and tashbih (anthropomorphism) due to political exigencies. The issue of the independent capacity of reason to perceive the good and evil of things, and the subsidiary doctrine of justice, became so much a characteristic of the Shi'ah that justice came to be recognized as one of the principal tenets of the Shi'ite creed.
That the Shi'ite opposition to ra'y and qiyas is not to be taken to have been an opposition to the role of reason in ijtihad becomes completely obvious when we examine the extant documentary evidence. At the present the Shi'ah state the principle of the interrelation of Divine laws and actual benefits and harms and the principle of harmony between reason and religious law in these words: Whatever is the judgement of reason, is also the judgement of the Shari'ah.
This is an incontrovertible axiom of Shi'ite jurisprudence. The above discussion makes it clear that the Shi'ah Imamiyyah approach to ijtihad was an independent one: it was neither bound to ra'y and qiyas, nor did it impose any bounds on reason in the manner of the Ahl al-Hadith. The Imamiyyah jurists on the one hand recognized the rights of reason and regarded it as one of the sources of law, on the other hand they rejected qiyas and ijtihad bi al-ra'y in their books on jurisprudence, in chapters devoted to qiyas. However, it would have been in order if the latter scholars had followed the ancient ones in discussing qiyas and ra'y in their works. It would have helped to define the exact limits of the prohibited form of qiyas, which would have been better understood. This would have prevented some individuals from waging a battle against reason under the pretext of opposition to qiyas. In fact it would have been better for scholars to devote a separate chapter to reason and rational grounds in their works on jurisprudence, in which they could delineate more precisely the role of reason and also discuss, secondarily, the inadmissibility of qiyas. In view of this author, the absence of any discussion by the latter scholars about the inadmissible form of qiyas and the limits of the role of reason in legislation has been more or less detrimental to Shi'ah fiqh and ijtihad.
We should know that the great secret of Islam, from the viewpoint of the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt (A), is the principle that the general laws of the Book and the Sunnah are sufficient for satisfying the religious needs of Muslims for all time, and that they have no need of ra'y and qiyas. It is characteristic of all Islamic laws that they are not only not hindersome to human progress in any era, but are conducive to it by guiding and directing it in the right direction. All that is needed to grasp this great secret is to have an enlightened and firm grasp of the vital issues. This great secret of the resourcefulness of Islam can also be called 'the great secret of ijtihad'. To be certain, if an independent chapter were devoted to the above topic in books on jurisprudence, some of the existing contradictions and constraints in the relationship between fiqh and progress would have been eliminated. This problem requires an independent study and here we shall abstain from going into further details.
In the course of history, those Sunni schools of fiqh which were more rigid and formalistic and allowed lesser role to reason in deduction of laws, either disappeared gradually or the number of their followers diminished. The Zahiris, who followed Dawud ibn 'Ali, became altogether extinct. The Hanbali school, which after the Zahiri is the most rigid and formalistic of Sunni schools, gradually lost followers, and had it not been for the appearance of Ibn Taymiyyah, who provided the material on which Wahhabism was later to thrive, perhaps today the number of followers of the Hanbali school would have been very small.
The school of Malik spread only in North Africa and Maghrib, away from the centres of Islamic culture, and, as Ibn Khaldun says, the cause of the spreading of the school of Malik in North Africa and Maghrib was that the inhabitants were Beduins who lived away from the centres of science and culture. In any case, the rigid and formalistic Sunni schools declined and lost followers with the passage of time.
Akhbarism in the Imamiyyah Tradition:
One of the most surprising as well as regrettable phenomena was the emergence of Akhbarism among the Shi'ah in the early eleventh/seventeenth century. Akhbarism was a hundred times more rigid and formalistic than either the Zahiri or the Hanbali school. Its emergence must be considered a great catastrophe in the Shi'ah world whose effects more or less survive to the present day, causing stagnation and obscurantism in the Shi'ah Muslim society.
The founder of Akhbarism was Mulla Amin Astarabadi, who expounded his beliefs in his famous book Fawa'id al-madaniyyah. Mulla Amin, as his book shows, was a brilliant and learned man. In general, those who found a school, no matter how baseless, rigid and false its teachings may be, are brilliant and intelligent men. A dullard cannot found a school and gather followers around himself. The dullards, however, are influenced by those brilliant individuals and become their loyal followers.
Amin Astarabadi claims to have discovered some truths which nobody before him had succeeded in knowing. Also, he claims a kind of Divine inspiration for himself; in the introduction to the Fawa'id al- madaniyyah, he says: And you (i.e. the reader), after having gone through our book, will find in it truths untouched by any of the early or latter philosophers, legists, scholastics, and jurisprudents, and yet they are only a sample of what my Lord, the Almighty and the Supreme, has granted to me.
In this book he challenges even the philosophers and the mutakallimun, as occasionally he has to discuss some issues related to philosophy and kalam. In the book's tenth chapter, he discusses the meaning of nafs al-'amr. The eleventh chapter is named by him "Fi bayan aghlat al-'Asha'irah wa al-Mu'tazilah fi awwal al-wajibat" ("On the mistakes of the Ashai'rah and the Mu'tazilah about the first obligations"). In the twelfth, he cites the mistakes of Muslim philosophers and theologians.
Amin Astarabadi under different pretexts, tried to deny the legal authority (hujjiyyah) of three of the four well-known sources of law, that is, the Quran, ijma', and 'aql, thus recognizing only the Sunnah as the reliable source. As to the Quran, he claimed that no one has the right to refer directly to the Quran and to interpret it. Only the Infallible Imams have such a right. Our duty is to refer to their ahadith.Only those parts of the Quran that have been explained in hadith may be referred to for legal purposes; other parts whose exegesis does not exist in hadith may not be acted upon. Also in order to deny the authenticity of the text of the Quran, Amin Astarabadi raised the issue of its corruption (tahrif).
As to ijma', he denied its validity, considering it an innovation (bid'ah) of the Sunnis. He also offered many arguments to deny the authority of reason. On the contrary, with respect to ahadith he went to the other extreme and claimed that all the traditions, especially those of al-Kafi, Man la yahdruruhu al-faqih, al-Tahdhib and al-'Istibsar are of certain authenticity and legally binding. He ferociously attacked al- 'Allamah al-Hilli, who had classified traditions into sahih, muwaththaq, hasan, and da'if, and occasionally insults the 'Allamah and his followers in his book.
He categorically rejected the very principle of Ijtihad (even in its latter sense in which the Shi'ah fuqaha' had accepted it) and regarded it as an innovation in the faith. No one has any right to follow anyone except an infallible Imam, he claimed. He brought the entire force of his opposition to bear against reason and its authority. He claimed that all innovations involving reason - such as regarding Ijtihad as legitimate, considering the zawahir (apparent meanings of the Quranic verses) to be of binding authority, classifying ahadith into weak and strong, inquiring into the reliability of transmitters of ahadith and the like - came into vogue because the fuqaha' have followed the practitioners of qiyas, the scholastics, philosophers, and logicians to rely upon reason. Now, if Mulla Amin were to prove that reason is liable to error except in matters relating to objects of sense - experience or those which are derived from it (such as the concepts of mathematics), the fuqaha' would no longer go after Ijtihad and reason. Accordingly, he advanced rather forceful arguments to disprove the authority of reason in matters which are not perceptual or derived from sense-experience. He is especially keen to prove that metaphysics and theology, since they are based on pure reasoning, are devoid of any value; hence the title of the twelfth chapter of the Fawa'id al-madaniyyah:
On part of the errors of philosophers and Muslim theosophers (hukama') in their sciences and that their cause-as we have proved earlier-is that no one who deals with the issues whose preliminaries are extra-sensible is secure from error except the Infallible Ones (the Prophet [S], Fatimah [A], and the twelve Imams [A]).
There, he discusses some well-known problems of philosophy, such as the necessity of an intervening rest between two reciprocating straight line motions, that something which is necessarily associated with some impossibility is also impossible, the problem of precedence, and the problem of the preponderance of will.
On the whole, he is of the opinion that reason can be a guide only in the study of problems related to the natural sciences, which are based upon sense-experience, and in that of mathematics, whose concepts are derived from such experience or are closely related to it, but not in problems of theology and metaphysics. This view agrees totally with the outlook of the European empiricists of the sixteenth century. Incidentally, the period in which Astarabadi lived approximately coincides with that of the emergence of empiricism in Europe. It is not known whether his views were original or he had borrowed them. All that we know about him at the present is that he lived in Makkah for nearly ten years where he studied under Muhammad Astarabadi, to whom he refers as a faqih, a mutakallim, and philosopher. After that he had spent several years at al-Madinah. But we know nothing about how he came to adopt those views, whether he had innovated them or had borrowed them from someone else ...
Amin Astarabadi himself, and his followers as well, do not consider him as the founder of a new school called Akhbarism. Rather they consider him a revivalist who restored the way of the early Shi'ah scholars of hadith. They claim that their way is the same as that of the early Shi'ah that was followed until the times of al-Shaykh al-Saduq and from which the people were gradually led astray by such scholars as Ibn Abi 'Aqil, Ibn Junayd, al-Shaykh al-Mufid, al-Sayyid al-Murtada, and al-Shaykh al-Tusi, who brought in reason and ijtihad to temper with Divine commands. Shaykh Yusuf ibn Ahmad al-Bahram (d. 1186/1772), the author of al-Hada'iq al-nadrah, who was himself a moderate Akhbari, in the tenth muqaddimah of al-Hada'iq al-nadrah, under a heading style "Fi hujjiyyat al-dafiil al-'aqli" (On the legal validity of rational grounds), cites the following words of Sayyid Ni'mat Allah al-Jaza'iri from the latter's work Anwar al-nu'maniyyah:
To be certain, a majority of our companions (i.e. the Shi'ah) followed a group of our opponents, among them philosophers. naturalists, or Ahl al-Ra'y and others, who, relying upon reason and its arguments. cast away the teachings of the prophets when they did not agree with their intellects.
In these words, which hint at excommunication, Sayyid Ni'mat Allah al-Jaza'iri considers the majority of Shi'ah scholars - and along with them the philosophers, the naturalists, and those who follow ra'y and qiyas to be heedless of the teachings of prophets, merely on the ground that they recognize the authority of reason. By the 'majority' he means all the scholars who came after al-Shaykh al-Saduq, as if until that time all Shi'ah had been Akhbaris.
In fact Akhbarism had never existed before as a school with distinct doctrines such as those based on the denial of the authority of the zawahir of the Quran, the denial of the authority of reason, impermissibility of the taqlid of anyone except the Ma'sum and so on. It is true that there were some who seldom went beyond quoting traditions in their books - even quoting them verbatim in their fatawa. But the fact is that the abundance of ahadith on the one hand, and the accessibility to the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt (A) on the other, had been the major cause that the need for ijtihad and the need to deduce particular rules from general laws had not yet been felt.
Al-Shaykh al-Tusi, in the introduction to al-Mabsut, says: "I had heard from the 'Ammah (i.e. the Sunnis) the criticism that our fiqh is limited because we do not practise qiyas and ra'y and is therefore also inadequate for answering all the problems. For years I had been desirous of writing a.work on legal deduction without having recourse to qiyas and ra'y, deducing in it particular rules (furu') from the fundamental general principles (usul) that we have been taught in traditions. However, various preoccupations and hindrances prevented it." Then he adds:
My determination was weakened further by the absence of any desire on the part of this sect (i.e. the Imamiyyah) towards it and their indifference in this regard; because they have compiled the traditions which they relate with their familiar vocabulary, to the extent that if in a problem different words to which they are not used to are employed to convey the same sense, they consider it as an odd thing.
Al-Tusi makes it clear that the biggest impediment in his writing of such a book was that it was not yet customary among the Shi'ah to practise ijtihad and to deduce particulars from universals.
As said before, there had not emerged any great jurist until that time who could officially practise ijtihad and deduce particular rules from the general principles. There had been some - such as al-Shaykh al-Saduq, Ibn al-Walid, and others - whose method was based on narration of traditions, not on a discursive study of the subject. Even if they wrote any book on kalam, their argument consisted mainly of traditions. It was they whom al-Shaykh al-Tusi calls 'muqallidah' (imitators) and criticizes them. Al-Sayyid al-Murtada - as quoted in the introduction to al-Sara'ir by Ibn Idris - refers to them as ashasb al-hadith min ashabina (the 'ahl al-hadith' from among our companions), and al-'Allamah al- Hilli, in Tahdhib al-'usul, calls them 'al-'akhbariyyun min ashabina' (the 'akhbaris'-traditionists-from among our companions).
Perhaps it is on this account that al-Shahristani, in al-Milal wa al- nihal,divides the Imamiyyah into the subsects of mu'tazilah and akhbaris. In the first volume of his work, he says: When there came to be divergence in the traditions narrated from their Imams, as time passed every group of them took its own way, and some of the Imamiyyah became either Mu'tazilah, or Waidiyyah, or Tafdiliyyah, or Akhbariyyah, or Mushabbihah, or Salafiyyah.
However, it is quite certain and definite that in the early era there was no school opposed to that of ijtihad and legal deduction amongst the Shi'ah to have challenged the authority of the zawahir of the Quran or the authority of reason in order to defend hadith.
The appearance of Akhbarism, as I have said before, was a catastrophe for the scientific and intellectual life of the Shi'ah. Many individuals came to adopt its teachings and came to look down upon reason and rationalism. They made reflection upon the Quran a taboo and, instead of making the Quran the criterion for the acceptability of hadith, made hadith a criterion for the Quran. Fortunately there emerged eminent personalities among the mujtahidun and usulis who fought the influence of the Akhbaris. Among them the names of Wahid Behbahani and Shaykh Murtada al-'Ansari - may God elevate their station - stand high. To describe in detail the services of these two personages is beyond the scope of the present study.
By the way, it should not remain unsaid that the struggle against Akhbarism was a difficult and complex matter because its teachings took a deceptive and self-righteous stance which misled the public. It was for this reason that they rapidly gained influence and popularity after Amin Astarabadi ...
As is known, there broke out severe and bloody conflict towards the end of the second/eighth century and the beginning of the third/ninth between the Ahl al-Hadith wa al-Sunnah, who resemble the Shi'ah Akhbaris, and the Mu'tazilah, who believe in the role of reason and the validity of rational arguments. Al-Ma'mun (r. 198-218/813- 833), who was personally a man of learning, supported the Mu'tazilah and backed them in the controversy about the createdness of the Quran. He sent out a circular declaring those who denied the creaturehood of the Quran as heretics, who had no right to be judges and preside over the courts of law nor was their testimony to be accepted in the courts. As a result the Mu'tazilah attained great power during al-Ma'mun's reign. More philosophical works than at any other time were translated into Arabic during al-Ma'mun's reign and rationalism became prevalent When al-Mutawakkil (r. 232-247/846-861) came to power, he reversed the tide by throwing the weight of his support behind the Ahl al-Hadith. The Mu'tazilah were proscribed and the publication of philosophy was banned. Al-Mas'udi, in Muruj al-dhahab, writes:
When the caliphate fell to al-Mutawakkil, he ordered the people to abstain from discussion and debate and whatever they were used to in the days of al-Mu'tasim and al-Wathiq. He directed them to adopt compliance and imitation.
Al-Mutawakkil's support for the Ahl al-Hadith wa al-Sunnah - who like the Shi'ah Akhbaris had a deceptively self-righteous stance, spoke untiringly of submission and devotion and persistently chanted the phrase qala Rasul Allah ('so said the Apostle of Allah') - had an extraordinary effect on the people, to whom it appeared to be a defence of the Prophet. For this reason, al-Mutawakkil, despite his tyranny and debauchery, came to assume saintly image in the popular mind.
The Mu'tazilah could never recover from that blow. And we, the Shi'ah, should thank God that there arose no Mutawakkil in the era of the emergence of the Shi'ah Akhbaris, who were a hundred times more obscurantists and formalistic than the Ahl al-Hadith wa al-Sunnah, in their defence.
However, we should note the point that even though the Akhbari onslaught was defeated through the courageous resistance of a number of the followers of the school of ijtihad, but the Akhbari thinking was not completely destroyed. Whenever the champions of ijtihad have made any headway and wherever they have put their feet, Akhbari thinking had to recede and disappear. But Akhbari obscurantism still rules in those places where they were not able to reach.
How often we come across mujtahids who do ijtihad with an Akhbari brain. Many of the kind of things which are published in the name of the 'teachings of the Ahl al-Bayt' and come to the market, but which strike dagger into the back of the Ahl al-Bayt of the Prophet (S), are no more than the remnants of the thought of Mulla Muhammad Amin Astarabadi.