According to my research, which is primarily my own classroom experiences and observations, ijtihad is a concept that is taught far too late. If teaching the Islam component at A-Level, it is certainly explored there but I argue that students should be taught this in KS3 (or even KS2) so that when they are presented with diverse Muslim conclusions on an issue, it should come as natural to them. If not, we are in danger of a single dominant Islamic worldview deemed as most authentic and alternative opinions dismissed as irrelevant or not authentic. This is not to dismiss Islamic tradition where there is consensus on several issues but Islamic tradition also has a rich history of diversity where healthy scholarly debate takes place on several issues – every topic is up for discussion.

Teaching students about ijtihad will allow students to recognise that when Muslims seek to answer questions, they are merely trying to find what is the truth. Post-Muhammad, they are not able to ask Muhammad himself. The Quran, although believed to give eternal principles and guidelines, doesn’t cover every single issue that will ever arise so the need for ijtihad becomes even more important. However, just like different doctors may give different prescriptions to a patient based on the same illness, different scholars will give various opinion on the same moral issue based on their own understanding of the sources and reasoning. Ijtihad unlocks this world of diversity within Islam that removes the binaries of ‘forbidden’ and ‘permissible’ and gives students the understanding of how, particularly in Islamic legalism, there are several conclusions on one issue.

In a lot of classroom practice, when presenting different views on an issue within Islam, especially a moral one, teachers may often default to using phrases such as ‘X type of Muslim would believe…’, ‘Y type of Muslim would say…’, ‘Z type of Muslim would do…’. We may add labels in front of the word ‘Muslim’ such as ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, ‘progressive’ or ‘reformist’ (despite these labels not existing in Islamic terminology). This can especially affect teachers who are teaching the components of GCSE RE that require diverse views on moral and ethical issues. The end answer to different Muslim views on gender roles, for example, might be presented but do students know how different Muslims came to those conclusions apart from using an isolated quote from a source of authority? Students must not just learn scholarly views but literally be walked through and almost mimic what a scholar of Islam does to come to a conclusion – they should be empowered to perform ijtihad as an activity on a topic so they can see how complex it is for a Muslim scholar to come to a conclusion. It allows students to engage with hermeneutics by reading Islamic sources and asking questions about it: What is being said? Who is it being said to? Is the source authentic? What was culture and custom at the time this was written? Do any of the Arabic words have different translations? If there is a command, is it a binding command or a recommendation? Does what is written apply today? Do we take it literally or draw principles from it? Having students ask these questions empowers them to truly become scholars and ask similar questions when engaging with any religious text, which is powerful RE in itself.

Further resources

My blog on classroom ideas at KS3: Teaching diversity of opinion in islam
Katie Gooch’s blog on classroom ideas at KS2: What might teaching diversity of opinion in Islam look like in KS2
My full talk at RExchange 2022: Ijtihad: The Key That Unlocks Islamic Thought