The Lies of Maajid Nawaz, Part 2: Islam, Reason and the Doors of Ijtihad
In my previous article, I argued that in the book Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue, Maajid Nawaz is misleading the Sam Harris and his readers about the permissibility of eating pork in Islam.
In this article, we’re going to take a close look at what Maajid Nawaz says about the doctrine of ijtihad in Islam. The term ijtihad should not be confused with jihad. Both terms derive from the Arabic root ج-ه-د (J-H-D, jahada, ‘struggle’), yet they carry different meanings in Islam, and refer to broadly different practices. Jihad in Islam has the literal meaning ‘struggle’, and in practice it generally refers to holy war, while ijtihad has the literal meaning of ‘individual striving’, and in Islamic terminology refers to the use of individual reasoning.
The question of individual reasoning is an important one for the conversation that author Sam Harris is attempting to have with Maajid Nawaz in the book. Islam has famously banned the use of reasoning by individual Muslims. Questioning Islam, asking about the nature of God, doing philosophy (falsafa in Arabic) and so on is generally banned in Islam. This state of affairs explains the near total failure of science in Muslim countries, and much else about the many failures of the Muslim peoples of the world.
A Muslim who is genuinely interested in reforming Islam, in bringing Muslim societies into the modern world and ending their medieval backwardness, should be keen to lift the ban on individual reasoning placed upon Muslims by Islamic orthodoxy centuries ago.
Yet when we open Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue, we find Maajid Nawaz making a very curious statement about the use of reason in Islam. On page 76, Nawaz tells us the following:
- Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue, p 76
So, Nawaz, the Sunni Muslim “reformer” and self-described “secular liberal”, claims two things here:
- ijtihad means “interpretation”
- the doors of ijtihad are open, and “cannot be closed”
Are these claims true? Not according to academic experts on Islam. They tell us that he’s wrong on both counts. In the quotations below, some sources refer to the “doors” of ijtihad, while others refer to the “gates” of ijtihad, the difference merely reflecting the preference of Arabic-to-English translators.
As before, we will consult the Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, the standard scholarly reference work on Islam, written by academic scholars of Islam, for academic scholars of Islam. For brevity, the Encylopaedia is generally referred to as the EI2.
On ijtihad, we find the following. Note that work on the EI2 began in 1954, and thus used a now-outdated system of romanized Arabic spelling, so that the modern “IJTIHAD” is rendered as “IDJTIHAD”. I have highlighted the most important lines in bold:
IDJTIHAD (A.), literally “exerting oneself”, is the technical term in Islamic law, first, for the use of individual reasoning in general and later, in a restricted meaning, for the use of the method of reasoning by analogy (kiyas [q.v.]). The lawyer who is qualified to use it is called mudjtahid. Individual reasoning, both in its arbitrary and its systematically disciplined form, was freely used by the ancient schools of law, and it is often simply called ra`y [q.v.], “opinion, considered opinion”….
…During the first two and a half centuries of Islam (or until about the middle of the ninth century A.D.), there was never any question of denying to any scholar or specialist of the sacred Law the right to find his own solutions to legal problems. It was only after the formative period of Islamic law had come to an end that the question of who was qualified to exercise idjtihad was raised. From about the middle of the 3rd/9th century the idea began to gain ground that only the great scholars of the past, and not the epigones, had the right to idjtihad. By the beginning of the fourth century (about A. D. 900), the point had been reached when the scholars of all schools felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from that time onwards no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all. This “closing of the door of idjtihad”, as it was called, amounted to the demand for taklid [q.v.], the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of established schools and authorities. A person bound to practise taklid is called mukallid. See further Section II.
Joseph Schacht, The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition. Brill, 1954–2005. Vol. 3 H-Iram on IDJTIHAD, p. 1026.
(n.b. that this entry was written by the great Islamologist Joseph Schacht, one of the founding maestros of the empircal study of Islam.)
So, according to Schacht in his entry in the EI2, the door of ijtihad is closed, and the foremost meaning of the term is “individual reasoning“. Is he alone in his understanding of ijtihad?
In an article and Douglas Murray’s Gatestone Institute website, Ottoman Empire historian Harold Rhode (whose PhD adviser was Bernard Lewis) asks: “Can Muslims Re-open the Gates of Ijtihad?”
“The exercise of critical thinking and independent judgment — or Ijtihad –was an important way to address questions in the early centuries of Islam. After approximately 400 years, however, the leaders of the Sunni Muslim world closed the “Gates of Ijtihad;” Muslims were no longer allowed use itjihad to solve problems. If a seemingly new problem arose, they were supposed to find an analogy from earlier scholars and apply that ruling to the problem that arose. From the 10th century onwards, Sunni Muslim leaders began to see questioning as politically dangerous to their ability to rule. Regrettably, Sunni Muslim leaders reject the use of itjihad to this day.”
[emphases added]
This is rather curious isn’t it? A historian of the Ottoman empire (PhD Columbia University, Islamic History. 1979) says that the gates/doors of ijtihad are closed, and that Muslim reformers need to re-open them, and he says that the term means “exercise of critical thinking and independent judgment”.
Why does Maajid say the opposite, that the doors/gates of ijtihad “cannot be closed”, and that the term means “interpretation”, when academics tells us that the doors/gates of ijtihad are closed, and that the term means “exercise of critical thinking and independent judgement”, and “individual reasoning in general” ? Shouldn’t Maajid, who claims to be a “reformer” of Islam, be interested in promoting the use of individual reasoning for Muslims, so disastrously banned by Islam, to the detriment of more than a billion and a half people?
Looking to the entry on ijtihad in the academic Encylopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (a different reference work from EI2), we find the following:
“In early Islam ijtihad, along with terms such as al-ray, qiyas, and zann referred to sound and balanced personal reasoning.
…
More importantly, they spoke of the closing of the doors of ijtihad. The Crusades, the rise of regional dynasties subsequent to the collapse of the Abbasid empire, and the Mongol invasions were seen as threats to Islamic intellectualism in general. Coupled with this, attacks by rationalists and philosophers on Muslim orthodox thinking convinced jurists that any further ijtihad posed a great danger to orthodoxy itself. The doors of ijtihad were thus closed in the fourth Islamic century, and a long period of taqlid followed. Recent scholarship has challenged this view based on evidence that mujtahids existed well into the sixteenth century, and that several prominent premodern scholars denied the closure of the doors of ijtihad.
[emphases added]
While the entry does add that “[r]ecent scholarship has challenged this view”, this language indicates that the status of the doors of ijtihad as being closed is an orthodox dogma that needs to be challenged.
So, according to the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, ijhtihad refers to “sound and balanced personal reasoning”, and the doors of ijtihad are closed.
Consulting Majid Khadduri, a major academic scholar of Islam and author of “War and Peace in the Law of Islam”, we find that he says the same as our other three sources. On page 36–37 Khadduri tells us:
“..these schools varied from the relatively liberal Hanafite and Mu’tazilite jurists-permitting large measures of independent reasoning (ijtihad)…
…In the fourth century of the Islamic era only four schools were recognized as orthodox, namely the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali schools. Their law-books became the standard text-books and any attempt to depart from them was denounced as innovation (bid’a). As a result ijtihad was gradually abandoned in favor of taqlid (literally “imitation) or submission to the canons of the four schools, and the door of ijtihad was closed.”
[emphases added]
Lets check with another source. Bernard Lewis, widely regarded as one of the greatest academic scholars of Islam, writes in his book The Muslim Discovery of Europe :
“…[I]n the traditional formulation, “the gate of ijtihad was closed” and henceforth no further exercise of independent judgement was required or permitted. All answers were already there, and all that was needed was to follow and obey. One is tempted to seek a parallel in the development of Muslim science, where the exercise of independent judgement in the early days produced a rich flowering of scientific activity and discovery but where, too, the gate of ijtihad was subsequently closed and long period followed during which Muslim science consisted almost entirely of compilation and repetition.”
[emphases added]
- Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, p 229–230
Thus, according to Lewis, ijtihad means “the exercise of independent judgement” and “the gate of ijtihad was closed”.
Our findings on the meaning and status of ijtihad in Islam are summarized in the table below:
Does anyone care to ask Mr Nawaz why his claims about Islam are so directly at odds with what academic scholars have to say about the subject? Is his co-author Sam Harris aware of these discrepancies? Why would the “secular liberal” Maajid Nawaz want to mislead Harris and his Infidel audience about the banning of the use of individual reasoning in Islam?
