ATTENTION

In the name of Allah The Beneficent The Merciful

Dear Students
Assalamualaikum

FINAL EXAM WILL BE HELD ON, AT
DATE:  THE 27TH JUNE 2011 (MONDAY)
TIME:   9.00 - 11.00AM.
VENUE:  SR 1.15

NEXT WEEK WILL BE REVISION WEEK.  IT IS VERY CRUCIAL THAT YOU DO NOT MISS NEXT WEEK CLASS..

ALL THE BEST TO YOU

Ijtihad

In the name of Allah The Beneficent The Merciful

This brief note on ijtihad is taken from Dr Jamal Badi’s book.

Lawful ijtihad is the mission of a Muslim.  The Qur’an is full of verses that call for creativity, perfecting work and excelling in ijtihad in managing affairs (al-Isra’: 53; al-Baqarah: 83; al-A’raf: 145; al-Ankabut: 46)

Literal Meaning of Ijtihad

Literally, ijtihad means creativity derived from hard work or over exertion.  The word is derived from the word ‘juhud’ which means hardship and ability.  Thus, ijtihad is characterized by hardship in producing a product (a product can be an idea, a physical product, a ruling, a fatwa).  In short, ijtihad denotes the process of profound thinking.

Ibnu Qayyim defines ijtihad as “what the heart decides after a lengthy contemplation in pursuit of correct viewpoint.  It demands truthfulness, sincerity and the cleansing of the heart in search of rightness. 

Al-Jassas explains that ijtihad is an effort toward achieving the aim of the mujtahid.  He further states that in shari’ah, ijtihad comprises three meanings:

• The legal analogy (qiyas) – based on deduced defective cause (‘illah – the philosophy behind a legal decision).  ‘Illah is used in extending rulings from the original case to the subsidiary.
• What is determined by opinion without using analogy, for example, ijtihad is used to determine the direction of the ka’abah.
• Jurisprudential deduction

Al-Ghazali defines ijtihad as “over-exerting oneself in search of the knowledge of shari’ah rulings to the extent that he feels incapacitated to go beyond that search”.  Whatever a person achieved from his/her ijtihad is knowledge.  Knowledge is ‘a conclusive belief that this is what is required from him/her and does not mean a belief that this is the truth for which others must follow him’.

Shari’ah rulings are two kinds

• There are those unanimously endorsed and thus established by consensus (ijma’)
• There are rulings which diverse opinions have been established by consensus

PO and Movement

In the name of Allah The Beneficent The Merciful

Our mind needs to be provoked in order to come up with creative ideas to solve problems.  Our mind systematically arranges concepts that are connected together.  This means our mind does not automatically connect ideas that are unrelated.  Being creative is to be able to connect ideas that seem to be unrelated at all.  To do this, we have to provoke our mind by giving our mind a shock.  According to de Bono, silly and stupid ideas could shock our mind to be creative.  We can provoke our mind through juxtaposing two unrelated concepts together and through making impossible or unrealistic statements.

Random Juxtaposition (RJ)
To solve our problem, we pick a word randomly and place it next to the problem that we want to solve.  We can open a book or dictionary and randomly pick a word form the randomly opened page. For example, from our research we found that many students cannot think critically and creatively.  To do RJ,

1. we randomly pick a word...and say the word we have picked is burger.  So, we wrote "student can't think PO hamburger"
2. we list the features of the word we have picked
3. from the features, think of ideas to solve the problem of students who can't think

Movement

• MacD---famous for packaged deals----> we can offer packaged deal to students...those who register into thinking class will be given an i-pod each.
• Meat---is the main ingredient of burger----> Students who did not improve will be given their money back
• Sesame bun---reminds us of sesame street which is fun, many methods of learning and hands on experience----> mix methods of teaching with fun learning activities that could appeal to all type of students such as doing thinking activities while observing nature
• Lettuce---green----> go...students who want to go to university should take thinking test, those who passed the test are admitted to the university
• Tomato---red----> stop...those who failed the test will be rejected
• Mustard---yellow----> prepare...those who were neither good nor bad, could be given a chance to take a preparatory course in thinking, and will be accepted after they passed the test taken at the end of the course.

Intermediate Impossible
It is a deliberate attempt to leave the main stream to provoke ideas by making stupid and impossibly statements.  The following methods can be used to come up with PO statements

1. Escape -- negate what we have taken for granted.  For example, normally students go to school, we negate this and say PO: Students should not go to school
2. Reversal -- reverse the statement.  For example, male and female students should not live together.  We reverse this statement and say 'PO: male and female students should live together' or PO: Bullying is good
3. Exaggeration -- we exaggerate features of something.  For example, we say PO: Bus has 12 engines
4. Distortion -- we distort things or something that we normally do.  For example, PO: take test before studying or PO: rent of mahallah is installment to buy the room.
5. Wishful thinking -- PO: it would be good if we have enough parking space for every student and lecturer and staff or this university

Movement

• the immediate consequences of that statement
• the benefits 
• special circumstances would make it a sensible solution

Example, PO: customer should not pay to borrow videos
Movement
Immediate consequence -- No revenue
Benefits -- many would come to borrow videos
circumstances -- Need to generate income other ways such as selling advertising, pop-corn, ask the customer to complete market surveys