The School of Islamic Renewal

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

There are people who believe that every fatwa issued by a man of religion or a jurist is correct, and who follow it on the assumption that the jurist is trustworthy and could never err or let particular circumstances color his ruling. There is now a crowd of muftis in the Islamic world, and it seems that everyone who has let his beard grow has become a mufti with a claimed right to issue whatever fatwas he sees fit.

Here it is necessary to warn that there is a distinction between what is known as the ruling of the Shari’a (al-hukm al-shar’i) and what I call the jurisprudential ruling (al-hukm al-fiqhi). The ruling of the Shari’a is that ruling which applies to all people, resting on a clear Qur’anic text that admits of no interpretation, or on a sound, carefully verified hadith that fully accords with the teachings contained in the Noble Qur’an. It is a fundamental condition that a ruling of the Shari’a rest on a text.

The jurisprudential ruling, on the other hand, expresses the independent reasoning (ijtihad) of a jurist or jurists without resting on a text, or it may rest on texts outside the primary sources of Islamic legislation. Of course, there is room for ijtihad in Islam, and sound ijtihad is that which rests on deep study of the original texts, and is not issued except after situating the matter under consideration within the total picture formed by the texts, so that the one exercising ijtihad can see how it fits within that picture. That is, ijtihad does not rest on a single text that could be understood in different ways, but rests on a comprehensive picture composed of the sum of the relevant Qur’anic verses and hadiths. For example, when Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, exercised his judgment in not cutting off the hand of a thief because of a famine or drought that had struck the land, he drew on a comprehensive Islamic picture concerning consideration for people’s circumstances and the Islamic nation’s responsibility to provide its children with their daily bread. And when he exercised his judgment regarding the marriage of soldiers to the daughters of the Levant, he looked to the comprehensive picture particular to marriage, one meant to prevent the rise of social ills within Muslim society. The meaning is that a single, non-definitive text is not sufficient grounds for ijtihad and the issuing of fatwas.

This is with the understanding that ijtihad is the child of its own time and place, and is not valid for every time and place. The circumstances of time and place affect the reasoning of the one exercising ijtihad, and his judgment in the end reflects his own way of handling the circumstances of his time and place, and is governed by the limits of knowledge available in that time and place. Thanks be to all who exercised ijtihad out of the reality of their own lives, and may God reward them well, but this does not mean that their judgments have been transformed into sacred pronouncements and definitive rulings of the Shari’a. The door of ijtihad in Islam is always open, so that people may be able to address the various issues that arise across time and place. What is regrettable is that most jurists have shut down ijtihad, and in the end have shut down the Muslim mind and crippled the nation’s capacity to think.

We now suffer from a crowding and proliferation of fatwas to such a degree that they have turned the ease of Islam into hardship, complicated the religion, and turned it into a heavy burden on people. The Qur’anic verses that carry legislation are characterized by ease, and generally provide broad outlines that the Muslim can work out in detail through his own ijtihad, but jurists have continued, across time, to lay down details and details of details, until they closed off to the Muslim the channels of reason, reflection, contemplation, and inquiry. They have worked to restrict Muslims’ thinking and to cripple the Muslim mind, to the point that Islam, according to their formulations, has become more complicated than the Jewish religion as it appears in the book the Jews now hold authoritative.

…who do not fear God, and we must not listen to them. An example of their fatwas is found in their particular jurisprudence against rising up against an unjust ruler, on the grounds that he did not become a ruler except by God’s own command, glory be to Him. The jurists of sultans and rulers worship money and seek the sultan’s favor; they are not trustworthy custodians of the nation and its religion, and we ought to hold a settled position regarding their fatwas in advance, so that we do not fall prey to their pronouncements.

There are also jurists who are carried far away by customs and traditions, so that they come to believe that whatever they were raised on is the truth, and they work to twist the arm of Islam into conformity with society’s customs and traditions. Many jurists have Islamized custom and tradition, and in most Islamic societies custom and tradition have become sacred, beyond challenge. This is why we see, across the Islamic world at large, people who have surrendered the Noble Qur’an so that their customs, traditions, and the values they were raised on since childhood might take its place. This appears vividly in the Arab world with regard to fatwas concerning women, which take into account that Arab traditions do not much respect women, and enslave them to a considerable degree.

There are also jurists who harbor within themselves particular positions and views far removed from the divine teachings, but who search through books for a text here or there, outside the Qur’an and the Sunna, in order to substantiate their own point of view. There are those driven by whims, dominated by their own desires, who search for ways out for their deeds and words at religion’s expense. These are most often foolish zealots who are ready to declare all people unbelievers, including Muslims who pronounce the two testimonies of faith. Examples of such people are many and scattered throughout our present reality. They have turned Islam into a religion of debauchery and crime, and have turned people away from the path of God.

There are jurists whose minds cannot hold more than the eye of a needle, who try to confine Islam within a closed crucible and monopolize it for themselves. An example of these are certain men of religion who specialized in the study of Shari’a and came to believe that their study qualifies only them to speak on religious matters. They work to monopolize religion and say that no one but a student of Shari’a has the right to speak on religious affairs. These people constitute a great danger to Islam, because they teach students in universities and Shari’a institutes this very monopoly, and cultivate in them tense, hostile attitudes toward others. Because of the narrowness of their outlook, and their denial of others’ right to inquire into religious matters, one ought to be wary of their fatwas, their pronouncements, and their actions — because through their conduct they violate the word of God, glory be to Him: “Do they not then reflect on the Qur’an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?”

The pronouncements of these categories of jurists do not constitute rulings of the Shari’a; they are merely jurisprudential rulings, uttered for the most part by jurists without knowledge, or without genuine reflection on the Noble Qur’an. We, as Muslims, are not bound by jurisprudential rulings. We are bound only by the rulings of the Shari’a that are as clear as the sun, and we do not accept being turned into slaves of those who suppress opinion, suppress Islamic thought, constrict it, and narrow it. The Muslim nation has lost a great deal as a result of narrow-mindedness and intellectual obtuseness, and so it fell behind and has remained behind other nations scientifically, socially, intellectually, and culturally. And if Muslims are to rise again, they must hold fast to the ruling of the Shari’a, and must pay no heed to those who try to divert Islamic teachings from their true purposes in building individuals and societies.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “مدرسة التجديد الإسلامي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.