Ijtihad provided security to the culture of fiqh...

Ijtihad provided security to the culture of fiqh, breathed life in its values and this life got energy and activity. However, the toughest and most bitter critic of Ijtihad, Mullah Muhammad Amin Ustarabadi[^2] used to raise hue and cry that the concept of Ijtihad came from the Sunni fiqh. What is surprising is that this gentleman’s name was included in the league of heavy weight scholars of his time. He kept insisting rather blatantly that Ijtihad was one of the qualities of Sunni Fiqh.

He is the one who initiated this theory. Now the whole school of Sunni Fiqh is adamant on it. As an example, Fakhruddin Razi says, “Just the way Aristotle laid the foundation of logic, Muhammad Ibn Idris Shafei (died in 204AH) invented Principles of Fiqh (Usul al-Fiqh).[^3] The fact of the matter is that neither Aristotle was the inventor of intellectual constitution, nor Shafei was the creator of rules and regulations of Fiqh.

What could be stated is that Aristotle arranged the vague and scattered rules of logic in an order; and similarly Shafei polished some of the laws of Fiqh in his writing, Al-Risala. There will be more on this subject in the next few pages of this book. Anyway, there is no question that the rules and regulations we are talking about did not show up after the Aimma because almost all the terms used in Usul al-Fiqh are abundantly present in our treasure of traditions.

And it makes it quite obvious that in the days of Aimma some portions of Usul al-Fiqh as needed were present in the Islamic knowledge base. Now let us suppose that a few of such terms appeared after the Aimma, it still does not change the facts, as people of those times adopted simpler language to convey the message and did not use these terms.

[^1]: Faqih Sheikh Abdul Karim Hairi, who nourished the scholastic activities in the city of Qum says the following about Usul al-Fiqh: فاعلم ان علم الأصول فو العلم بالقواعد الممهدة لكشف حال الأحكام الواقعية بأفعال المكلفين It should be known that Faculty of Usul al-Fiqh is a collection of useable rules of wisdom and awareness with whose support an inquirer gets most suitable answers to scholarly queries.

Darul Fawaid Jaza, p 31, published Muassasatun Nashar Al Islami, Qum [^2]: There are a number of lush green hills in the fertile land called Vahistan and Varkan around river Atrak and the Gurgan stream in Iran. In this area Ustarabad is the biggest town. Mullah Muhammad Amin was born in this town. He grew up here and got the elementary education.