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In plain terms
Ijtihad
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The first two vowels are short, and the final aa is long.
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Ijtihad is the disciplined effort a qualified scholar makes to work out a ruling. It applies when a question isn't answered directly by the Qur'an or sunnah. Later scholars can reach different conclusions from the same material.
Related terms
Qiyas
Qiyas is analogical reasoning: extending a known ruling to a new case that shares its underlying reason. It is one of the tools scholars use in ijtihad. Two scholars can identify…
Ijma
Ijma is the scholarly consensus of qualified jurists on a point of Islamic law, in a given era. Classical scholarship treats a genuine ijma as strong evidence. How carefully a…
Madhhab
A madhhab is an established school of Islamic legal thought, built on a shared method for deriving rulings. The four Sunni schools in wide use today are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i…