Defining Ijtihad: Open-source ijtihad: Meet the ijtihackers

So much bandwidth, so little time

The definition of ijtihad from the online encyclopedia Wikipedia reads:

“Ijtihad is a technical term of the Islamic law that describes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the sources of the law, the Qur’an and the Sunna. The opposite of ijtihad is taqleed, imitation. The person who applies ijtihad, the mujtahid, must be a scholar of Islamic law. The word derives from the Arabic verbal root jahada ‘struggle’, the same root as that of jihad. The common etymology is worth noting, as both words touch on the concepts of struggle, effort, and meditation.”

This is just an excerpt from the wikipedia entry. We’ll return to ijtihad in a second, but I want to say a couple of words about Wikipedia. What is interesting about Wikipedia is that anyone can contribute and edit content. If we wanted to, we could go right now and change this definition of ijtihad. You might ask: What good is a collection of knowledge that can be so easily modified? Wouldn’t this ‘openness’ make for completely chaotic and useless knowledge? That’s the beauty of it. Wikipedia, which is free, already contains more knowledge than the Encyclopedia Britannica, which costs a lot of money. Certainly, some of that content may be garbage. But not all of it. And the point is that anyone so inclined can edit the garbage and replace it with quality content.

Of course, one person’s quality content is another person’s idea of garbage, so people sometimes engage in edit wars, deleting each other’s content and replacing it with their own. But Wikipedia, which is based on a piece of software called a wiki, saves every change made to a page, which makes it extremely easy to go back to a previous version if, for example, someone replaced your entry with something completely different. Eventually, people reach an agreement on the basis of what qualifies as objective content; pages stabilize, reflecting agreement amongst the various contributors. If you think about it, it’s amazing that a computer program can help teach members of a very diverse community to articulate their positions, debate them, and achieve consensus.

Defining ijtihad

Let’s get back to the definition of ijtihad. Traditionally, the argument of those who reject ijtihad goes something like this:

God is perfect. Religion, which comes from God, is perfect. Society must struggle to conform to the values established by religion, not the other way around. Therefore, religious innovation is bad because it attempts to change religion to fit human needs.

On the other hand, the argument of those who affirm the need for ijtihad goes something like this:

God is perfect. Religion, which comes from God, is perfect. Society must struggle to conform to the values established by religion. But this struggle involves change, change from wherever we may happen to be spiritually at a given moment to a more advanced place. Change requires innovation. Thus, religion without innovation makes improvement of the soul impossible.

According to this latter interpretation, ijtihad is defined a bit more broadly, and every single one of us – not just the scholars – is encouraged to apply it. Ziauddin Sardar (2003) described the interplay between what is fixed in Islam and what Muslim need to create anew in their practice as follows:

“The cardinal framework [of Islam] is eternal. Truth remains unchanged; but the human condition does not. It is the principles of Islam that are eternal, but not their space-time operationalisation. The Beloved Prophet himself, as well as the Rightly Guided Caliphs, varied the application of the principles of Islam as the circumstances changed, but always within the parameters of Islam. They had fully understood the spirit of Islam.” (Permanence and Change in Islam, in Islam, Postmodernism and Other Futures: A Ziauddin Sardar Reader, p. 49)

Following this line of thinking, the ultimate criteria for ijtihad are the following two questions: First, Will it make you a better Muslim? and second, What are your grounds for arguing this? If you can answer the first question in the affirmative, and can articulate your reasoning in response to the second question, then no one but God has the power to judge you. If A says following a female imam and praying in a mixed congregation will make her a better Muslim, who will stand in her way? If B says praying in complete segregation will make him a better Muslim, then who will prevent him from practicing his religion as he sees fit?

Now, the tricky part is when B forces A to do things his way, or vice versa, because he believes his way is the only true way to practice Islam. The Qur’an has very specific things to say about compulsion in religion and preventing people from worshipping. At the same time, the Qur’an also instructs us to exhort or inspire others to do that which is right. How do you reconcile this with the teaching of to you your religion and to me mine?

Some overzealous folks attempt such a reconciliation by equating exhorting with enforcing, downright bullying instead of inspiring. But short of enforcing, there is something else we can do to exhort and inspire, something which we have apparently long lost the skill to do: debating our positions. Ijtihad does not only involve independent reasoning but also collective debate.

To have productive debate, one needs a certain disposition and a certain type of environment. The disposition is the hard part. All the knowledge in the world without the disposition to consider change in oneself is worthless, so I will conveniently set aside the matter for now. The environment, on the other hand, is a much more practical issue. Furthermore, having the right environment will hopefully begin to change people’s dispositions.

Techno-ijthihad

Technology, when properly applied, can help create those environments. Look at Wikipedia, an environment where knowledge can be articulated, debated, modified and adapted by the community. Of course, Wikipedia is not for everybody, metaphorically speaking. Many people want the certainty and authority of the Encyclopedia Britannica, not the fluidity and impermanence of Wikipedia, with the responsibilities it entails. My response is that, again metaphorically speaking, those people are not struggling hard enough.

In order to further explore the kind of environment needed for productive debate and innovation, we need to take a look at the adjective used to qualify ijtihad in the title of this article: open. Here, the term is used as it is in the open source software movement. It describes a way of producing software in which the source of the software, the actual lines of code that tell the computer what to do, are accessible or open to anyone. The opposite of this mode of production is one where the source of the program is closed, inaccessible to users.

Eric Raymond, who has written a lot about the open source software movement, compares the different modes of production by using the analogies of a cathedral and a bazaar. He writes of the process of building Linux (an open-source operating system):

“No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here; rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who’d take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles. The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work, and work well, came as a distinct shock.”

As the Linux system itself proves, open source software development works. Out of multiple contributions made by different people emerges something with unity and cohesiveness, something which in turn can be further modified and improved.

Who are the people who make this happen, who contribute to Linux and other open source software projects? Generally they are referred to as hackers. Although the stereotype of a hacker is someone who breaks into computer networks with evil intent, the kind of hackers involved in open source software are computer engineers who contribute their time and skills to creating programs that others can use freely (freely in this context means both having the ability to modify it, and being able to acquire it for little or no cost).

Why do hackers contribute their valuable time without the expectation of monetary compensation? In a couple of words, because they like what they do. They are passionate about it. Eric Raymond articulates the code of ethics that motivates hackers as follows:

“The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.”

In closed software, such as Microsoft’s Windows operating system, only authorized programmers have access to the source code. This is the cathedral model. The programming is done in one language only. Between the programmers and the users there is a wall, and information flows only one way. Users are expected to consume the final product, not modify the source code or adapt it. Innovation is controlled by programmers, so any innovation coming from the users is rejected, on the grounds that it would corrupt the source code.

In open software, such as Linux, the source code is available to anyone. This is the bazaar model. Hackers contribute to the overall system. One hacker, for example, might write a routine to print a document. Another hacker might come along and write a better routine, which then replaces the older one. Yet another hacker might have a different type of printer, so he or she would be able to write a routine to allow Linux to print using that device. Innovation is not only encouraged, it is how Linux improves and remains useful. Certainly, some users will opt to merely run the software as it exists, but everyone is allowed to get access to the code. Hackers might use different programming languages, as long as they ensure that their contributions work with the system as a whole.

Open source religious interpretation

In a closed religious system, an authorized class of interpreters controls access to God’s word, claiming exclusive knowledge of how it should be read and applied. This interpretation is done exclusively in the authorized language. The class of interpreters serves as a wall between the believers and God’s word, and information flows only one way. Believers are supposed to accept the authorized interpretation, not modify, adapt, or even question it. Innovation happens, but it is controlled by the class of interpreters and it is certainly not called innovation. Any innovation coming from common believers is rejected on the grounds that it would be a corruption of God’s word.

In an open religious system, God’s word is accessible to everyone, and everyone has the freedom to interpret it in their native language. Believers interpret the word of God according to their realities. No interpretation is believed to be applicable to all contexts. Within a specific context, interpretations that make more sense tend to displace interpretations that make less sense. But interpretation is more than coming up with new ideas; those ideas have to be debated and validated by the community, according to their collective understanding of the principles and values of the religion. Certainly, not everyone engages in interpretation, but the freedom exists to do so. Interpretation is innovation, and it is what allows people to improve their religious practice, and what keeps a religious message meaningful and universal.

Of course, I am making broad generalizations. For one thing, I am not even talking specifically about Islam but about religion in general, because I believe all religions can be practiced as open or closed systems. My personal belief is that religion is meant to be open. It is the practitioners who make their approach to religion more or less open, more or less accepting of ijtihad or innovation.

So how do the factors that motivate open source hackers transpose to the kind of believer who practices open source religion.

Meet the ijtihackers

The ijtihackers are a new generation of Muslim believers. Just as open source hackers are committed to the openness of software development, ijtihackers are committed to the openness of religious practice. Ijtihackers are not necessarily software engineers, but they are aware of the affordances of new information and communication technologies and take advantage of them.

With some modifications to the original hacker ethic, we can express the ijtihacker ethic as follows:

The belief that independent reasoning, information sharing and civil debate are powerful positive goods for the umma, and that it is an ethical duty of ijtihackers to promote openness in the practice of Islam by facilitating access to information, resources, and technologies. The projects that ijtihackers can undertake are only limited by our imagination.

According to Phil Agre, the most pressing challenge that any type of activist faces in our times is how to make one’s voice heard in a society of millions. Agre discounts traditional theories of democratic participation as just that, theories, and proposes a pragmatic and practical approach he calls issue entrepreneurship. He writes:

“[I]t is central to the political process that individual citizens, in their public personae, are able to associate themselves with issues. Citizens, whether politicians or activists, make their political careers in entrepreneurial fashion by identifying issues that are coming to prominence, researching and analyzing them, staking out public positions on them, and building social networks of other citizens who have associated themselves with related issues, especially those whose positions are ideologically compatible. Not only is this kind of issue entrepreneurship central to the making of public policy, but it is also central to the “politics”, in the broad sense, of nearly every institutional field…”

In other words, the most practical way to change the world is to take up a cause one feels passionate about, research it, articulate one’s position, join others interested in the same issue, form solidarities with other groups that share similar ideologies, put pressure on the government and on society to recognize the issue, and set the agenda for what needs to be done. Obviously, this is not as easy as it sounds. It requires a lot of hard work and struggle. It is a veritable jihad.

While technology cannot relieve us from any of the actual hard work, it can make our actions more effective. With new information and communication technologies at their disposal, ijtihackers can extend their reach across the dimensions of space, institution and affinity, forming new and more powerful forms of solidarity.

While previously most of our solidarities where formed locally, new technologies allow us to extend our reach to form global solidarities. Thus, we can form social networks interested in the same issue across local and global settings. For example, a person interested in women’s issues in Islam can form connections not only within her local community, but can get online and join others interested in the same issue all over the world.

Likewise, while previously we were limited to form alliances within the institutions that we belonged to, now thanks to technology it is much easier to form solidarities across other institutions interested in the same issues. For example, let’s say the person interested in women’s issues in Islam works at a hospital. Thanks to technology, it is much easier now for this person to connect to people in other hospitals, or in other institutions such as schools or businesses; in other words, people interested in similar issues but spread across different institutional settings.

Finally, technology allows us to broaden our connections with people we share affinities with. This means that if the person in our example is a Latina interested in women’s issues in Islam, new technologies make it much easier to form alliances with other non-Latino and/or non-Muslim people also interested in women’s issues; in other words, people interested in parallel issues with a somewhat similar ideology.

Imagine the power of forming such strong alliances across these different dimensions. It brings to mind a quote by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Weblogs for Allah

One tool you could start using right now to begin doing all of this, and become an official ijtihacker is a web log, or “blog.” Blogs basically function as online journals, with software taking care of formatting, displaying, and archiving. There are already thousands of Muslims who blog. Go to any search engine and type the words muslim and blog, and you’ll get plenty of results (I couldn’t find any Latino Muslim blogs, so clearly there is a space to be filled here).

Blogs have a reputation for containing mostly self-centered personal diatribes. But there are also bloggers who balance their personal voice with authentic research and analysis. Ijtihackers can use their blogs to articulate their positions and publish their research; in other words, to engage in ijtihad.

Although they might seem monological, blogs are actually great at promoting dialogue, usually through comments after each post. A community of bloggers is highly self-corrective: if someone posts something that is inaccurate, usually other people will call them on it. In the context of ijtihad, this means that there is a mechanism for accountability in the process of interpretation.

If we think back to the so-called ‘golden age’ of Islam, we would recognize many characteristics of the kind of ‘open’ system I have summarized here: research, independent reasoning, debate, the forming of networks across spaces and institutions, and even across different religious and cultural affinities. Innovation was encouraged then. Ijtihad was seen as a necessity. But with innovation and ijtihad came responsibility. Let’s embrace that responsibility again, and let’s do our part in ensuring that all of humanity works together towards a more peaceful, just and enlightened existence.

Ulises Ali Mejias is a student in the Communication, Computing and Technology in Education doctoral program at Teachers College, Columbia University. His blog can be found at ideant.typepad.com.