45 - IJTIHÂD: Today, many of the symptoms of the end of the world have appeared and spread far and wide. One of these symptoms is that the number of the ignorant will increase and men of knowledge will decrease. The ignorant will be authorities in the religion and mislead people. These symptoms are written in detail in the hadîths written in Mukhtasar at-tadhkirat al-Qurtubî and in al-Birgiwî’s Wasiyyat-nâma. Then, Muslims should be vigilant. They should not believe every word. They should not believe those who do not mention the Ahl as-Sunna scholars and their books but extract meanings from âyats and hadîths according to their own minds in their khutba, books and papers. The non-madhhabite people are either heretics or unbelievers, both of whom have always disguised themselves as religious men and deceived and misguided Muslims. To learn the truth concerning the âyats and hadîths about which these heretics talk, we should search and find the meanings which the sholars of Ahl as-Sunna gave them. To do this, we should read the dependable ’ilm al-hâl books. The Ahl as-Sunna scholars studied all the âyats

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and hadîths minutely, learned their true meanings by splitting hairs and wrote them in books. Today, ignorant people whose religious knowledge is only a smattering of Arabic assume themselves to be mujtahids. By saying, “We have graduated from the university; we have received diplomas,” they despise Islamic scholars. However, if a teaching which the mujtahids of a period reported as ijmâ’, that is, unanimously, is one of the fundamentals of the religion, that is, if it has spread everywhere so that even the ignorant know it, it is fard both to believe and to follow it. He who does not believe such an ijmâ’ becomes an unbeliever. He who believes but does not follow it becomes a fâsiq. If a unanimously reported teaching is not one of the fundamentals of the religion, he who disbelieves it does not become an unbeliever. He becomes a heretic, a man of bid’a. He who does not follow it becomes a fâsiq, a sinner.

Ibn Malak wrote on ijmâ’ in his book Usûl al-fiqh: “If the mujtahids of a certain era did not agree on how an action should be done and explained it differently, the scholars succeding them should follow the words of one of them and it is not permissible for them to offer an explanation that would not agree with any of those different explanations. This principle was established with an ijmâ’, i.e. with the consensus of all scholars.” There is not a mujtahid in any part of the world today. ‘Mujtahid’ means ‘an Islamic scholar who has attained to the grade of ijtihâd’. Not from ourselves do we say that there is no mujtahid on the earth today; all scholars have been declaring this, including Hadrat Shâh Walî-Allah ad-Dahlawî, whose name Mawdûdî tries to exploit as a false witness. For example, Ibn ’Âbidîn, while commenting on the statement, “Muadhdhin’s crying very loud will spoil their salât,” in ad-Durr al-mukhtâr, wrote: “Throughout the four hundred years following Rasûlullah’s (’alaihi ’s-salâm) death there has been no great scholar to do qiyâs, nor any mutlaq mujtahid to derive rules by comparing one affair to another.” As declared in the Hadîth, profound scholars who would attain to the grade of ijtihâd would come every hundred years, but these people would be mujtahids within a madhhab, who would not undertake the task of doing qiyâs, that is, performing new ijtihâd, but they would try to restore the ijtihâd of the leader of the madhhab to which they belonged and to lead people to the right course, since there would be no need for new ijtihâd and their sole task would be to reinforce the teachings of the scholars of Ahl as-Sunna. A Muslim who is not a mujtahid is called a muqallid (follower). Today, we

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all the Muslims on the earth are muqallids. No matter how much learned a muqallid is, he cannot do ijtihâd over a matter disagreeing with what the mujtahids have communicated before; this is understood from the unanimity quoted from Ibn Malak above. The hadîth, “My umma will not agree on deviation,” indicates that this unanimity of scholars is a means of salvation and is correct.