AN EXAMINATION OF THE USE OF HUMAN REASONING (IJTIHAD) AS A SOURCE OF LAW IN THE EARLY PERIOD OF DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC LAW

In Islamic law, the express textual injunction in the Quran and Sunnah are - limited in number, while the incidents and problems of life are unlimited and unending. It would therefore be unreasonable and illogical to assert that all the problems and exigencies of life will be covered by the textual injunction. Reason demands that rules of law should be derived from the primary sources by scientific and methodological means. The position of ijtihad is one that has generated a lot of controversies among Muslims, both past and present. The disagreement over the use of human judgement or rational opinion in deriving rules of the Shariah is further accentuated by the ever changing nature of the human community and the corresponding need of the law to cater for emerging issues, some of which were neither contemplated nor covered explicitly by the Shariah.