مفقوم وجحيت اجتهاد گروهي

The Concept and Authoritativeness of Communal Legal Reasoning

Legal reasoning (ijtihad), namely the juristsʹ organized and methodical endeavor to infer legal rulings has been practiced since early Islam. 1jtihad has been based on individual attempts in all periods of Shia jurisprudence (fiqh) and most of the periods of the fqh of the Sunnis. Although significant and fruitful in itself, individual reasoning has always been exposed to serious losses which have stepped up with the human sciences and relations having turned more and more complicated nowadays. One of the proposed solutions to render ijtihad more efficient is to make it communal. Various interpretations have been made of communal ijtihad, such as the work a group of qualified jurists get together and through exchange of ideas arrive at unanimous conclusions. This type of ijtihad, although facing ambiguities both in theory and practice, seems to be more fruitful than individual reasoning. There are many issues involved in communal ijtihad, of which the present writing only deals with the concept and authoritativeness.