Said Shabbar’s Ijtihad and Renewal is an analysis of ijtihad and the fundamental role it can play in generating a positive revival or reform of the modern Muslim world. In the early centuries of Islam, the response of Muslims to problem-solving the various issues and challenges that faced their rapidly expanding community was to use their intellect and independent reasoning, based on the Qur’an and Sunnah, to address them. This practice was known as ijtihad. As the centuries wore on however, the gates of ijtihad came to be generally closed (although the issue is a more complex one) in favor of following existing rulings developed by scholars, by way of analogy, even though these were time and context rooted. This development occurred, it is contended, to such a degree that as reason and use of intellect now held captive to schools of thought (madhahbs) and earlier scholarly opinion, stagnated, so did the Muslim world.
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