ijtihad (redirected from Islamic lawyer)

ijtihad

In Islamic law, the analysis of problems not covered precisely in the Qur'an, the Hadith, or the scholarly consensus called the ijma'. In the early Muslim scholarly community, every jurist had the right to exercise such original thinking, but the growth of legal schools prompted Sunnite Muslim authorities to declare that the principal legal issues had been settled by the 10th century. Shi'ite Muslims have always recognized ijtihad, and jurists considered learned enough for this kind of analysis have great authority. In the 20th century an attempt was made to restore ijtihad among Sunnites to help Islam adapt to the modern world.