Daily Times – Site Edition The myth of Ijtihad

Daily Times – Site Edition
SECOND OPINION: The myth of Ijtihad� �Khaled Ahmed�s TV Review

If the principle of doing ijtihad on the basis of the Quran was once allowed, then Allama Iqbal�s �ijtihad� on the Quranic injunction of �qat�-e-yadd� (cutting of hands) in his Sixth Lecture should be accepted. Not accepting his effort has led us to a situation where we have sentenced people to it but have not been able to cut the hands of a single thief. And those Islamic states who have, have not benefited from the law either

We Muslims say tirelessly that Islam allows new thinking through ijtihad. But when we start explaining the limits of ijtihad, it develops that virtually no new thinking is allowed. If you think that you can innovate on the basis of the Quran, you are wrong. You can�t do it on the basis of hadith either. And you can�t even do it on the basis of fiqh. What you have left is old thinking and on that too clerics may be divided. And if you follow a particular cleric you might be attacked by the followers of another cleric.

GEO (November 26, 2004) had its host Aniq Ahmad in his Alif discussing ijtihad with Mr Javed Ghamidi, Maulana Ahmad Javed, and a Shia scholar. Mr Ghamidi said that in the early phase of Islam there were more than one view of Quranic law, but in later times taqleed (imitation) developed over the edicts of the great Muslim jurists. Muslim society adopted taqleed after a decline in its character. The Shia scholar said that the common man could not extract guidance from the Quran and needed an expert. Another Sunni scholar said that ijtihad too was taqleed because the great mujtahids (innovators) of the past did not step outside the limits of taqleed. Ahmad Javed said that taqleed shut the doors of new thinking and investigation in Islam and made it rigid and static. He said in its early phase Islam required loyalty, not investigation, but to have continued in the same posture harmed Islam.

The only way Muslims can rise from their present prostration is by doing innovative thinking on the basis of the Quran. This is what Muslims did in the early days. Unfortunately, this ijtihad was not always progressive. The wrong law of talaq (divorce) in Pakistan is an innovation of the text of the Quran. The Hanafi fiqh has frozen it. But if the principle of doing ijtihad on the basis of the Quran was once allowed, then Allama Iqbal�s ijtihad on the Quranic injunction of qat�-e-yadd (cutting of hands) in his Sixth Lecture should be accepted. Not accepting his effort has led us to a situation where we have sentenced people to it but have not been able to cut the hands of a single thief. And those Islamic states that have, have not benefited from the law. The most ridiculous situation was created when General Zia imposed ushr (non-Quranic) along with Zakat (Quranic) because he did not allow ijtihad on fiqh. We had the comic ushr law that imposed 10 percent tax on barani (rainfed) areas and only five percent tax on canal-fed areas. When the system collapsed, we wrote off the barani ushr and fixed five percent (nisf-ushr) for the canal-fed lands. It was an ijtihad forced by circumstances but it looked like sin. The cobwebs on our minds are still intact.

GEO (December 5, 2004) in its programme Fifty Minutes, discussed Kashmir and other state policies with PPPP�s Taj Haider, Shahid Hussain and the Azad Kashmir leader Sardar Atiq. Shahid Hussain said that the need today was to keep a realistic perspective on issues of foreign policy but not without a more careful assessment of internal matters that cried out for new measures. Sardar Atiq favoured the Kashmir policy of President Musharraf saying that forward steps should be taken now but the solutions should be left to a later time when the atmospherics were right. Mr Taj Haider said that Musharraf had abandoned a principled position on Kashmir and was bending to American diktat. He said the PPPP was opposed to imperialism and Brahminism. He said General Ayub had divided the waters of the Indus river. Like him Musharraf had offered to divide the Kashmiri nation. He said he had damaged Pakistan�s stand on Kashmir and turned the world against Pakistan. Mr Shahid Hussain said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had himself asked Musharraf to give him alternative solutions.

Mr Taj Haider of the PPPP took a line that was illiberal to an extreme and betrayed his own party. Of course by imperialism he meant America and that was fine because all politicians must quiver on a reference to America for fear of being upstaged by the clergy. But his reference to Brahminism also opposed his party�s generally popular line on India. His reference to the Indus Waters Treaty was most misplaced as that would isolate the party in Punjab and internationally. Why does he have to do the maulavi thing? The truth is that Mr Taj Haider will not be able to upstage the MMA by stealing its thunder. He will end up harming his own party.

PTV�s Muhammad Malik got General (Retd) Hameed Gul in his Hot Seat interview on November 25, 2004, but failed to faze the old fox. Hameed Gul said he had nothing personal against army chief General Asif Nawaz but had raised objections to what he had said about Kashmir and the nuclear programme in a corps commanders� meeting. Asif Nawaz did not like this. About the Bahawalpur crash in which General Zia was killed he said all pointers indicated the United States. He said his son-in-law had borrowed money from Askari Bank (in crores) for his transport project after landing contracts on merit. His son-in-law was an old air force officer who had done business in Iraq on credits obtained from Askari Bank and had sold his property to finance his transport project. He said he had not planned the Jalalabad operation in which the mujahideen had been defeated by Kabul. He protested that Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had decided in the presence of the US ambassador Oakley that the mujahideen should be asked in 1989 to establish themselves in Afghanistan before asking for international recognition. He said he simply conveyed the PM�s message to the mujahideen after which the hapless Jalalabad operation was launched. He, however, admitted that it was immature of him to have participated in the plan to put together the IJI in 1990 to prevent the PPP from coming to power. He also denied that in his latest cassette message Osama bin Laden had owned up to the 9/11 terrorism. He adhered to his claim that the Jews had destroyed the World Trade Center.

The answer to Hameed Gul�s claim that 9/11 was not done by Muslims was given by columnist Hamid Mir in Jang. Osama bin Laden announced that he had carried out the 9/11 attacks in his cassette of October 29, 2004. In the beginning Hamid Mir too thought that the Jews had done it but in November 2001 when he was in Jalalabad he discovered that every Al Qaeda member had the photo of Muhammad Ata (the leader of the hijackers who crashed two airliners into the World Trade Center buildings) on their laptop computers. After that he became convinced that Osama had done the deed. In fact as the latest cassette revealed, Osama had thought of 9/11 in 1982 during the war in Lebanon. *