In religion, the Qur’anic approach supersedes all others. But it has come under attack from people who don’t believe in reflection and rely on the tenets “of those more knowledgeable and more pious.” Successive generations did the same, annotating the annotations until the religion ossified and the gates of ijtihad shut. They built a complicated clerical structure on the basis of “we know better,” believing that ordinary people need only know the bare necessities that enable them to fulfill their religious obligations. Examination and analysis in search of the wider horizons of knowledge to which Islam has called us are now totally rejected.
While I do not agree with this approach, I do act on the basis of Qur’anic language and logic. Mere imitation is not the proper Qur’anic approach, and whoever reads the Qur’an will find in it clear invitations to reflect and draw their own conclusions. “Will ye then consider not?” “Will ye not understand?”
The Qur’an, in fact, censures those who merely unthinkingly follow others. “And they would say: ‘Our Lord! We obeyed our chiefs and our great ones, and they misled us as to the (right) Path.’”
Reflection in Islam is an essential requirement. Without it the very basis of Islamic thought will begin to crumble. It is that painful reality that is behind our backwardness. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “The best of centuries is mine,” and acknowledging the greatness of jurists, scholars and legislators who preceded us does not mean that the knowledge handed down by them is inherently sacred.
In the end they are the words of men who labored within the context of their age and their understanding of it. If changing reality makes it clear that they are inflexible or prove unsuited to new developments then we are not required to abide by them. What we take from their work and what we leave aside may be subject to qiyas (reasoning by analogy) and ijtihad (the effort of one’s own judgment) as required by the interests of the Muslim Ummah.
Old societies are fundamentally different from ours and the individual and spontaneous ijtihad that was sometimes sufficient is no longer sufficient to accommodate the complexity of the present times. We must courageously meet the challenges and requirements of the modern age if we don’t want to be held back and marginalized. On the other hand, the Qur’an tells us to avoid the practice of takfeer (calling someone an infidel), and issuing prohibitions and sanctions because they are matters for the Creator alone.
Islamic doctrine rests on the belief of the individual. That belief comes through wisdom, exhortation, discussion, proof and evidence. These don’t grow in an environment that doesn’t encourage freedom of thought and doesn’t respect the outcome of that encouragement whether at home, at school or in society as a whole. It is a journey that begins with an invitation and ends with a conviction. Any shift in course through violence or compulsion negates the quality of voluntary belief and robs human beings of the divine gift of the mind. God willed that there be a diversity of religions until the day of resurrection and He alone knows the mind and the choices of his servants. “Let there be no compulsion in religion.”
The Qur’an enhanced the role of the intellect and raised the principle of will above arbitrariness. It planted in Muslims the seeds of a rational faith and backed it up by urging us to watch and test the phenomena. Those who merely copy are afraid to go back to the source of their religion to find tenets that suit our time.
Advances in printing, categorization and indexing have greatly facilitated the acquisition of knowledge and the search for information. Suppose Imam Abu Hanifa held a certain opinion because he didn’t have access to a certain Hadith or text dealing with that topic at a time when everything was handwritten and methods of collation were primitive. Now if later methods brought to light a Hadith which Abu Hanifa could not take into consideration because he didn’t know of its existence, is it not unreasonable for the Hanafis to continue to ignore that Hadith and deem anyone who takes it into account to be a sinner?
Islamic theorists in the modern age must be able to absorb the science of their age and look at the early works of tafsir, jurisprudence and Hadith. But they must above all bring back ijtihad to review all the rules established many centuries ago in the light of changing times.
(Suraya Al-Shehry is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)