[9] Also Holy Imam Muhammad Al-Baqir -asws has said...

[9] Also Holy Imam Muhammad Al-Baqir -asws has said: وعن ابن محبوب أو غيره ، عن مثنى الحناط ، عن أبي بصير ، قال : قلت لابي جعفر (عليه السلام ) : ترد علينا أشياء لا نجدها في الكتاب والسنة ، فنقول فيها برأينا ، فقال : أما أنك إن أصبت لم توجر ، وإن أخطأت كذبت على الله . And from Ibn Mahboub or another, from Mathni Al Hanaat, from Abu Baseer who said: ‘I said to Abu Jafar -asws : ‘Matters get referred to us whose existence we do not find in the Book and the Sunnah, we speak on them by opinion’.

Of every troop of them, a party only should go forth, that they (who are left behind) may gain sound knowledge in religion, and that they may warn their folk when they return to them, so that they may beware. From the above Verse the words ‘Nafr min kulla Firqatin’ (a party only should go forth’ and ‘ Layatafaqqahu ’ (understanding of the religion) are taken in order to justify the role of the ‘Faqih’ ‘to become a specialist’.

Three Ahaidht in the ‘tafseer’ (interpretation) of the Verse 9:122 are included in the Appendix II, from those Ahadith there is no way one could imply the Verse 9:122 would support the use of Ijtihad and taqleed. We will look at the meanings of the word ‘Faqih’ from Ahadith in the following paragraphs. How Ijtihad was Embraced by the Shias?

Sunni Muslims continued to practice Ijtihad after the Holy Prophet -saww but Ahl Al-Bayt -asws persistantly rejected it as can be found in several of their -asws traditions, however, after the Grand Occultation of Imam-e-Zaman -ajfj , power greedy and fame hungry Shias scholars tried to ‘reinvent’ what the Sunnis had done before, by replicating and redefining the same term ‘Ijtihad’ but slightly modifying its scope and definition and declaring it as ‘permissible’ if ‘Ijtihad’ is based on ‘Aql’ unlike that of Sunnis which, they blamed, was based on ‘Zan’ (guess) [11] .