Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A note on transliteration
- List of abbreviations
- Preface: Toward an intellectual history of modern Indonesian Islam
- 1 Technology, training, and cultural transformation
- 2 The open gate of ijtihād
- 3 An “Indonesian madhhab”
- 4 Sharī ʿa Islam in a Pancasila nation
- 5 New Muslim intellectuals and the “re-actualization” of Islam
- 6 The new ‘ulamā’
- 7 Next generation fiqh?
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - The open gate of ijtihād
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A note on transliteration
- List of abbreviations
- Preface: Toward an intellectual history of modern Indonesian Islam
- 1 Technology, training, and cultural transformation
- 2 The open gate of ijtihād
- 3 An “Indonesian madhhab”
- 4 Sharī ʿa Islam in a Pancasila nation
- 5 New Muslim intellectuals and the “re-actualization” of Islam
- 6 The new ‘ulamā’
- 7 Next generation fiqh?
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal once said: “A man must be severely limited in his knowledge if he chooses to imitate another person in matters of belief.” Indeed it is not permissible that we should follow others uncritically, not even men of the caliber of Abū Bakr, ‘Alī, Aḥmad, or Shāfi’ī.
Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1201), Kitāb Akhbār al-ṢifātCritical studies of the history of Islamic law and jurisprudence by European scholars had for most of the twentieth century been preoccupied with the question as to when, if ever, the “gate of ijtihād” was closed. While the fine points of an imagined chronology of this event were disputed among Orientalists, there seemed to be until relatively recently something of a consensus that this closure did indeed occur and that its result was a prolonged period of “ankylose” that was shaken into activity once again only in the modern period. A powerful challenge to this view was proffered by Wael Hallaq in a landmark 1984 article that demonstrated the continuing practice of various forms of ijtihād throughout Islamic history as well as its significance in the development of both theoretical jurisprudence and positive law over the centuries. Since then a number of studies have been devoted to the subject that have served to further our understanding of ijtihād/ taqlīd discourses in Islamic history.
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- Information
- Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia , pp. 24 - 53Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007