Islams Reformers

and hadîths minutely, learned their true meanings by splitting
hairs and wrote them in books. Today, ignorant people whose
religious knowledge is only a smattering of Arabic assume
themselves to be mujtahids. By saying, “We have graduated from
the university; we have received diplomas,” they despise Islamic
scholars. However, if a teaching which the mujtahids of a period
reported as ijmâ’, that is, unanimously, is one of the fundamentals
of the religion, that is, 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 not believe such an ijmâ’ becomes an unbeliever. He who
believes but does not follow it becomes a fâsiq. If a unanimously
reported teaching is not one of the fundamentals of the religion,
he who disbelieves it does not become an unbeliever. He becomes
a heretic, a man of bid’a. He who does not follow it becomes a
fâsiq, a sinner.
Ibn Malak wrote on ijmâ’ in his book Usûl al-fiqh: “If the
mujtahids of a certain era did not agree on how an action should
be done and explained it differently, the scholars succeding them
should follow the words of one of them and it is not permissible
for them to offer an explanation that would not agree with any of
those different explanations. This principle was established with
an ijmâ’, i.e. with the consensus of all scholars.” There is not a
mujtahid in any part of the world today. ‘Mujtahid’ means ‘an
Islamic scholar who has attained to the grade of ijtihâd’. Not from
ourselves do we say that there is no mujtahid on the earth today;
all scholars have been declaring this, including Hadrat Shâh Walî-
Allah ad-Dahlawî, whose name Mawdûdî tries to exploit as a false
witness. For example, Ibn ’Âbidîn, while commenting on the
statement, “Muadhdhin’s crying very loud will spoil their salât,”
in ad-Durr al-mukhtâr, wrote: “Throughout the four hundred
years following Rasûlullah’s (’alaihi ’s-salâm) death there has
been no great scholar to do qiyâs, nor any mutlaq mujtahid to
derive rules by comparing one affair to another.” As declared in
the Hadîth, profound scholars who would attain to the grade of
ijtihâd would come every hundred years, but these people would
be mujtahids within a madhhab, who would not undertake the
task of doing qiyâs, that is, performing new ijtihâd, but they would
try to restore the ijtihâd of the leader of the madhhab to which
they belonged and to lead people to the right course, since there
would be no need for new ijtihâd and their sole task would be to
reinforce the teachings of the scholars of Ahl as-Sunna. A Muslim
who is not a mujtahid is called a muqallid (follower). Today, we
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