The Gates of Ijtihad THE GATES OF IJTIHAD Intellectual Freedom a

The brilliance of classical Islamic civilization in its first four centuries is inescapable, and for the West it is no recent discovery. Indeed, knowledge of Islamic intellectual achievements, and the fact that at one time they greatly surpassed the West, are both deeply rooted in Western intellectual lore. The medieval West recovered much of its "lost" Greek intellectual heritage, such as Aristotle, not directly from Greek or even classical Latin but through translations from Arabic (Rosenthal, 1965, p. 14).

The crowning achievement of classical astronomy, the work of Claudius Ptolemy, is still known by its Arabic name, Almagest, rather than the Greek Syntaxis. Most of the traditional star names in Western usage -- Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Rigel, and a couple of hundred others -- are likewise of Arabic origin, as are a number of other scholarly or scientific terms such as algebra. Another feature of the Islamic classical age, dominance of the Mediterranean Sea and its commerce, is preserved by the Arabic-derived word used in every European language for the commander of a naval fleet: admiral (Savory, 1976, p. 124).

This Western consciousness of classical Islamic intellectual achievements is, however, closely linked to another long-established Western perception, namely that Islamic intellectual life stagnated after the classical period, and has either made no subsequent progress or has actua

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was rarely in force in either the classical Islamic era or subsequently; its punishments were too few and mild, and its procedures and standards of evidence far too demanding, for the interests of autocratic caliphs and emirs (Hodgson, 1974, v. 1, pp. 339-40). Thus it underwent little development. Rulers did as they saw fit in criminal matters, with only a nod to the accepted (Islamic) principles of the community as a whole. In contrast, Islamic civil law came into general force throughout the Muslim world. It evolved to meet the needs of a commercial society, and business law then as now had to deal with tangles of conflicting rights far more complex than those that come before many criminal courts. Much pre-Islamic business law remained in effect, where it was consistent with Islamic principles, but Islamic civil law "though largely ignored at court and among peasants ... was consistently effective, in letter and in spirit, among merchants (Hodgson, 1974, v. 2, p. 122). These same merchants were the leading members of most Muslim communities, so their views and concerns had enormous influence. Moreover, they took the main role in supporting learned institutions, which thus naturally were adapted to their inclinations and
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Approximate Word count = 3857
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)