necessity; rather, they exist to broaden life’s scope and remove the constraints that lead to hardship and undue difficulty. Such relief is secured through the permissibility of sales, lease contracts, partnerships, all other financial dealings, and the enjoyment of wholesome things.
- Embellishing objectives (kamāliyāt). This category encompasses praiseworthy customs and every refinement that rises above the level of mere needs.
Ijtihād
Ijtihād is the jurist’s exertion of his utmost effort to obtain a practical Sharīʿah ruling by way of deduction. “Exerting one’s utmost” means deploying every possible resource to arrive at the legal ruling until he feels within himself unable to add anything further.
Anyone who undertakes this exertion must be a jurist (faqīh), for a non-jurist lacks the qualifications required to reach the desired result. His effort therefore carries no legal weight, and he is not called a mujtahid—just as a person with no medical training, however hard he may strive, would not be accepted as a physician if he tried to diagnose and treat an internal illness in a specific patient.
Conditions of the Mujtahid
The scholars of uṣūl have laid down conditions; when these are met, a person is deemed qualified for ijtihād. Their summary is as follows:
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Mastery of the Book from a linguistic standpoint: he must know its vocabulary, composite phrases, and their subtleties through familiarity with lexicography, morphology, grammar, rhetoric (bayān), and semantics (maʿānī), acquired by study and regular engagement with the refined speech of the Arabs.
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Mastery of the Sunnah: he must know the text (matn) of the hadith itself and its chain of transmission (isnād), the route by which it has reached us, together with the standing of the transmitters in terms of criticism and accreditation. It suffices for him to rely on the judgments of trustworthy authorities such as Imām Aḥmad, al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and the other foremost scholars of the Sunnah.
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Thorough knowledge of uṣūl al-fiqh, including the principles governing general (ʿāmm) and specific (khāṣṣ) texts,