The Twenty‑Seventh WordTreatise on Independent Judgements of the Law (Ijtihad)
Five or six years ago in an Arabic treatise, I wrote concerning a matter to do with independent judgements on points of the Shari‘a. Now, at the request of two of my brothers, this Word was written about that matter in order to put in his place a person who had overstepped the mark in his attacks on it.
In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
If they had only referred it to the Prophet, or to those charged with authority among them, the proper investigators would have tested it from them [direct].
The door of independent judgements on the law is open, but at the present time there are six obstacles to entering it.