Ijtihad and Islamic Legal Reasoning

Ijtihad refers to the disciplined scholarly effort to derive a legal ruling on a question not directly and explicitly addressed by the Quran or hadith, using recognized principles of Islamic legal reasoning. The word itself shares a root with jihad, both carrying the sense of exerted effort — in this case, intellectual and scholarly effort. A scholar qualified to perform ijtihad, known as a mujtahid, is expected to have deep command of the Quran, the hadith and their authenticity, Arabic language and grammar, the areas of scholarly consensus (ijma), and established methods of legal reasoning such as analogy (qiyas), before attempting to reason toward a new ruling rather than simply asserting a personal opinion. Ijtihad is understood as necessary because new situations — arising from changes in technology, medicine, finance, and society — regularly present questions the classical texts do not address by name. Scholars engaged in ijtihad reason from the same shared principles the four schools of jurisprudence developed, which is part of why qualified scholars can sometimes reach different conclusions on a new question in good faith, and why ijtihad remains an active and ongoing feature of Islamic scholarship rather than something that ended in a past century.