TAQLID

Arabic Taqlid (covering with authority), in Islamic law, the unquestioning acceptance of the legal decisions of another without knowing the basis of those decisions. There is a wide range of opinion about taqlid among different groups or schools of Muslims. Of the four Sunnite legal schools, the Shafi'iyah, the Malikiyah, and the Hanafiyah all embrace taqlid, while the Hanabilah reject it. Shi'ite Muslims hold to an affirmative but quite different understanding of the institution. Those Sunnites who affirm taqlid believe that the legal scholars of the early period were uniquely qualified to derive authoritative legal opinions, binding upon the whole Muslim community, from the source materials of Islamic law, the Qur'an and the sunna of the Prophet. In the early period, a series of great legal scholars exercised independent interpretation (ijtihad) of the sources, carrying out their efforts through the use of such legal tools as analogical reasoning (qiyas). In the third Islamic century (9th century AD) and subsequent centuries, with the emergence of legal schools formed around some of the most significant scholars, it came to be widely believed that all important questions of law had been dealt with and that the right of independent interpretation had been withdrawn for future generations. Henceforward, all were to accept the decisions of the early authoritiesi.e., to exercise taqlid toward them. This doctrine is usually expressed as the closing of the gates of ijtihad (bab al-ijtihad). By contrast, Hanabilite scholars and others who follow the teachings of the school (e.g., the modern sect of the Wahhabis) insist on the necessity of returning directly to the sources to make independent judgments of their meaning. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Muslim modernists engaged in bitter polemics against taqlid, which they held encourages stagnation of the law and Muslim backwardness. In its use among the Shi'ites, taqlid refers to the necessity for a layman to accept and follow the opinions of an expert in Islamic law (mujtahid). Every individual who does not himself have the qualifications to interpret the sources of the law must choose a member of the religious class (the 'ulama') whom he accepts as his marja'-i taqlid (source of authority) and whose teachings he observes. When his chosen mujtahid dies, he must select and obey another, because it is forbidden to follow a dead guide. In this sense taqlid is compulsory for Shi'ites.