Doesn’t dismissing this as a storm in a teacup ignore the possibility that if Halal becomes the default type of meat (because other people don’t care on the whole what happened to the animal before it expires) this could effectively turn a whole industry sector over to ‘Islamic’ production?

And? So what?

In any case, this is simply fantasy. There will always be a number of people who have animal welfare concerns, and will therefore insist on non-halal meat. More to the point – and I’m sorry if I have to shout now – MOST PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY ARE NOT MUSLIM! So, why on earth would slaughterhouses keep a team of arabic incanters on hand, just to ensure that they’ll get an extra 2% or less of the market?

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If schools, employers and food businesses have to make halal provision – under threat of failure to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ – do you really think they’re gonna produce non-halal until they get to the 2% of the market and then call up an imam? Ordering halal from one supplier and non-halal from another?

Course not. The whole production process will be made halal, for economic reasons.

Or, to put it another way, everybody practices ijtihad in every day in every way…except those who claim to have discovered it.

A Saudi judge told a conference on domestic violence that a man has the right to slap his wife if she spends lavishly on such things as clothing, a Saudi newspaper reported, drawing criticism from rights activists in the conservative kingdom.

http://islamic-practices.suite101.com/article.cfm/ritual_slaughter_in_islam_dhabihah

http://blog.peta.org/archives/2007/07/shocking_new_ko.php

Yeah, right, all these niqabbed fourth wives, beaten for “disobedience” and honour killed for being raped are happily exercising itjihad.

Islam is “a complete way of life”, and you know it. Where it can, it takes over state laws. It’s “personal” in the UK only because Muslims are not yet sufficiently numerous to impose it by force as they always do when they are.

NO one made a “decision” to close any fucking doors. The intellectual, academic, economic, scientific technological and ethical retardatio/ stagnation characterising the Muslim world is actually islam’s natural and normal“equilibrium”.

Evidence

Evidence!?

Yemen, Somalia, Wazisitan, Afganistan, Pakistan, Baluchistan and a whole parade of other ’stans.

The Islamic world counts some 1.5 billion individuals living in some 57 countries, and yet only one country, Turkey, has what one could properly call an industrial sector (a common thing in other cultural/religious groupings), and this is largely due to billions in Nato subsidies.

There’s yer facts, sweetie.

But then what good could facts ever be to you when facts countradict, undermine and destroy the ‘truths’ in Islam?

Gsirrah is a bit like Communists who claim that the true Communism would be wonderful, but it hasn’t been tried yet.

Exactly! The ‘theory’ of Islam is so perfect, so complete and so flawless that the violent, retarded cultural , economic and social realities that result from it, the “FACTS”, don’t even matter and, indeed, can’t even be seen.

Roger-Gsirrah-Garaudy

Read some Magdi Allam, Gsirrah.

C’mon, take a deeeeep breath and summon the courage!

Islam stopped still on the closing of the gates of itjihad, as Robert Spencer said. Under the influence of secularist Western thought, tweaks are sometimes made, soon abolished when true Sharia makes a comeback, as in Pakistan now.

Itjihad has made no difference to sharia anywhere in the world.

Did Mo, or did he not, rape a nine-year-old? Can taqiyya -sorry, itjihad – change that fact?

1) Spencer claims that there was no more ijtihad after 1196. Even the sources he quotes don’t all support this. Spencer is not “quite right”.

2) Traditionally trained scholars issued legal opinions (fatawa) justifying the abolition of polygamy in Tunisia and in reference to the Qur’an – in particular the passage which says that a man, however hard he tries, cannot treat all of his wives equally. Regardless of what originally drove this trend, the scholars issued their opinions in a very obvious example of ijtihad which happened in the 1950s. Most Muslims I know in the west agree with this opinion and follow it.
You could also look at how Pakistani courts have reinterpreted the Qur’an (ie used ijtihad) to extend a woman’s right to divorce or the restrictions which nearly all countries (Saudi and UAE being the exceptions) have placed on a man’s right to divorce.

3) You still haven’t answered any of my points, like the fact that qadis continued to exercise ijtihad on an individual level throughout Islamic history. Or the fact that scholars like Ibn Taymiyya specifically rejected the idea of taqlid and claimed the right of ijtihad. If you want to check up on this either read some of Wael Hallaq’s writings or go trawl through some Ottoman court records.

4) What you have written reveals an assumption that sharia must be enacted as state law to be considered “sharia”. Sharia simply means “divine guidance”. It can be interpreted as state law, it can also be, amongst other things, a personal system of moral guidance. Ijtihad is a good part of what guides millions of Muslims in their interpretation of sharia and their application of it to their lives in western countries.