That is to say...

That is to say, a person who does not know the answer to a problem through ijtihad and through religious duty must imitate a living Mujtahid and cannot depend on the view of a Mujtahid who is not living, unless he had received that guidance while the Mujtahid was alive. This practice is one of the factors which have kept Islamic Shi’ite jurisprudence alive and fresh throughout the ages.

There are individuals who continuously follow the path of independent judgment, ijtihad, and delve into the problems of jurisprudence from one generation to another. In Sunnism, as a result of consensus of opinion (ijma’) that occurred in the 4th/10th century, it was decided that submission to one of the four schools (of Abu Hanifah, Ibn Malik, al-Shafi’i, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal) was necessary.

Free ijtihad or imitation of a school other than these four (or one or two smaller schools that died out later) was not considered permissible. As a result, their jurisprudence has remained in the same condition as it was about 1100 years ago. In recent times certain individuals in the Sunni world have turned away from this consensus and have begun to exercise free Ijtihad.

Shi’ism and the Transmitted Sciences The Islamic sciences, which owe their existence to the scholars of Islam who organized and formulated them, are divided into the two categories of intellectual (‘aqli) and transmitted (naqli). The intellectual sciences include such sciences as philosophy and mathematics. The transmitted sciences are those which depend upon transmission from some source, such as the sciences of language, hadith, or history.

Without doubt the major cause for the appearance of the transmitted sciences in Islam is the Holy Qur’an. With the exception of a few disciplines such as history, genealogy, and prosody, the other transmitted sciences have all come into being under the influence of the Holy Book.

Guided by religious discussions and research, Muslims began to cultivate these sciences, of which the most important are Arabic literature (grammar, rhetoric, and the science of metaphors) and the sciences pertaining to the external form of religion (recitation of the Qur’an, Qur’anic commentary (tafsir), hadith, biography of learned men, the chain of transmission of hadith, and the principles of jurisprudence).

Shi’ites played an essential role in the foundation and establishment of these sciences. In fact, the founders and creators of many of these sciences were Shi’ites.