Ijtihad

The Islamic religion is a global phenomenon and keeps expanding rapidly. Muslim law, like personal laws of other religious groups, is today facing several challenges from within the community as well as from outside. This is but natural in an era of unprecedented changes in societies everywhere. As a matter of fact, Islamic law like any other law is in need of reform. The urgency lies in the application of contemporary standards of principle of legality, equality, dignity and individual rights in matters relating to criminal law and marriage, divorce, inheritance, guardianship, maintenance and other social contemporary problems. Although religious scholars effectively terminated the practice of ijtihad five hundred years ago, the principles of interpretation are well established and hence; the need for contemporary interpretation is compelling. The practice of the Companions , the Successors and the leading Mujtahidun of the past tends to suggest that they enacted laws and took measures in pursuance of maslahah (issues) despite the lack of textual authority to validate them. Egypt is often taken as an example for a distinctively Islam nation and in the Western world it is often assumed that its legislation is based on Islamic principles. In recent years, the Iranian system has established the Exigency Council to resolve conflict between bodies like the Guardian Council and the Islamic Consultative Assembly, with regard to Islamic and criminal law's contemporary issues.

Ijtihad from the Qur'an and Hadith can have two approaches: One: The conditions that individuals need to reach the stage and power of ijtihad. Two: the conditions that mujtahids face for ijtihad in a religious context; that is, the existence or non-existence is the ground of the possibility of definitive ijtihad from the religious text. A healthy and acceptable ijtihad must fully meet the requirements of both approaches; and disruption in any of these circumstances can overshadow the certainty of religious ijtihad. The current interpretation of the propositions of the Qur'an and Hadith relies heavily on the ijtihad of lexicographers two centuries after the life of the Prophet. Thus, in spite of this historical rupture of the word and the absence of numerous all-contemporary dictionaries of the Prophet, there is no requirement that the lexical ijtihad of two centuries after the Prophet, as we now use it, be one with the spiritual reality of the language of early Islam. Therefore, even if the mujtahids of religious texts are correct in their personal ijtihad, because the conditions for interpreting the text are not available. The current interpretation of the text and propositions of the Qur'an and their hadith is basically uncertain; and at most, it is suspicious. 

The Qur'an, like other holy books, has smaller sections that are called "Surahs" based on the Qur'anic verses. The significant and privileged position of the Qur'an is accepted by all Islamic religions, and the effort to preserve this position, along with the divinity of its words, has caused most of the debates that refer to the structure of the Qur'an to be considered Tawfīqī (non-arbitrary) matters. The arrangement of the verses and the scope of the Surahs is one of the things that there is a consensus on their being non-arbitrary; However, there are two general views regarding the naming of the Surahs of the Qur'an. Most of the Qur'anic scholars believe that based on narrative and rational reasons, the naming of Surahs is one of the non-arbitrary matters; while some experts have considered it as a matter of ijtihād2. The acceptance of each point of view will have different jurisprudential effects. This research is of a qualitative type and has investigated the mentioned issue through a descriptive-analytical method based on content analysis. This study by inferring the arguments of both views and relying on the historical analysis of the stages of naming the Surahs of the Qur'an, has preferred the view of Ijtihādī-oriented naming. Of the most important jurisprudential effects of accepting ijtihād in naming Surahs of the Qur'an is the permissibility of accepting new names for Surahs, the point that the Qur'anic names do not imply the valuing of people or the subject, the impossibility of inferring jurisprudential rulings by referring to the names of the Surahs or proving the virtue of names, etc.