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Ijtihad

Independent legal reasoning by a qualified jurist.

This is legal information only. For advice on your own circumstances, speak to a lawyer.

Independent legal reasoning by a qualified jurist.

In Islamic law

The effort to derive a ruling from the sources. Questions genuinely new to Canadian Muslim life — RRSP designations, segregated funds, Henson trusts — are ijtihad questions, not settled classical ones.

In Canadian law

This is why a Canadian Muslim estate plan often needs both a lawyer and a scholar: the legal instruments here have no classical counterpart.

Across the madhahib

We have not yet researched whether the four Sunni schools differ on this term, so we are not going to tell you either way. Where a specific case turns on it, ask a qualified scholar rather than relying on a general summary.

Note

This is legal information only. For advice on your own circumstances, speak to a lawyer.

Citations & sources

Every factual claim on this page traces to a source below. Details change — check the original source before relying on any figure, fee or legal position.

Scholarly & institutional references
  1. Encyclopaedia of Islam — Brill
  2. Oxford Islamic Studies / Oxford Reference — Oxford University Press