Islam's Reformers .pdf

learned their true meanings by splitting hairs and wrote them inbooks. Today, ignorant people whose religious knowledge isonly a smattering of Arabic assume themselves to be mujtahids.By saying, “We have graduated from the university; we havereceived diplomas,” they despise Islamic scholars. However, if ateaching which the mujtahids of a period reported as ijmâ’, thatis, unanimously, is one of the fundamentals of the religion, thatis, if it has spread everywhere so that even the ignorant know it,it is fard both to believe and to follow it. He who does notbelieve such an ijmâ’ becomes an unbeliever. He who believesbut does not follow it becomes a fâsiq. If a unanimouslyreported teaching is not one of the fundamentals of the religion,he who disbelieves it does not become an unbeliever. Hebecomes a heretic, a man of bid’a. He who does not follow itbecomes a fâsiq, a sinner.Ibn Malak wrote on ijmâ’ in his book Usûl al-fiqh: “If themujtahids of a certain era did not agree on how an actionshould be done and explained it differently, the scholarssucceding them should follow the words of one of them and it isnot permissible for them to offer an explanation that would notagree with any of those different explanations. This principlewas established with an ijmâ’, i.e. with the consensus of allscholars.” There is not a mujtahid in any part of the world today.‘Mujtahid’ means ‘an Islamic scholar who has attained to thegrade of ijtihâd’. Not from ourselves do we say that there is nomujtahid on the earth today; all scholars have been declaringthis, including Hadrat Shâh Walî-Allah ad-Dahlawî, whose nameMawdûdî tries to exploit as a false witness. For example, Ibn’Âbidîn, while commenting on the statement, “Muadhdhin’scrying very loud will spoil their salât,” in ad-Durr al-mukhtâr,wrote: “Throughout the four hundred years followingRasûlullah’s (’alaihi ’s-salâm) death there has been no greatscholar to do qiyâs, nor any mutlaq mujtahid to derive rules bycomparing one affair to another.” As declared in the Hadîth,profound scholars who would attain to the grade of ijtihâd wouldcome every hundred years, but these people would bemujtahids within a madhhab, who would not undertake thetask of doing qiyâs, that is, performing new ijtihâd, but theywould try to restore the ijtihâd of the leader of the madhhab towhich they belonged and to lead people to the right course,since there would be no need for new ijtihâd and their sole task- 185 -