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Islamic philosophy, ‘Always Sunny’, and the difference between reason and assent

There is a current that runs through the history of Islamic philosophy, and that is the distinction between taqlid and ijtihad.

Taqlid also means tradition in Arabic, and refers to knowledge obtained by submitting to someone’s authority. Historically speaking, this authority has been the State or Church, but its definition is more far-reaching than that. Whenever we rely on the testimony of learned doctors, lawyers, professors, and anyone else in the ‘professional class’, we are perfoming taqlid: gaining knowledge by conforming to one’s (presumably rigorous) opinion.

In contrast to taqlid, itjihad means the arrival at a conclusion through the use of independent reasoning. One who performs ijtihad — a mujtahid — relies on nobody’s testimony but his own, using only his own experience and logic to understand the world. Although this requires more effort — in fact, the root of this word means ‘to struggle’ —only the mujtahid can be certain that his views on the world are true, provided that his starting principles and use of deductive reasoning are valid.

In this article, we’ll explore this distinction that was so crucial to the development of Islamic philosophy, linking…