Ijtihād ("lasting effort", "endeavour", as a Muslim legal term "independent judgement making") may in fact be regarded as a personal ijmāc. It has two roots: the first is independent "opinion" (ra'y, in the Omayyad period in Syrian practice nazar), and the other is "analogy" (qiyās). The need for it arose in cases where there was no point of reference to the matter in question in either the Koran or the prophetic tradition. This exceptional legal procedure was the prerogative of a tiny number of lawyers, the so-called mujtahidūn. Their indispensable prerequisites were determined by the various law schools and sects. We distinguish three types of ijtihād: firstly, ijtihād fi'sh-sharc. This is the highest form of ijtihād, which originally, after the "Companions of the Prophet" (sahāba) and their followers (tābicūn), only the six imāms (Abū Hanīfa, Sufyān ath-Thawrī, Mālik ibn Anas, ash-Shāficī, Ibn Hanbal and Dāwūd az-Zāhirī) might exercise, and, although theoretically, others might have done so, it would have been on such conditions as were more or less impossible – it was necessary to know the Koran and sunna as well as religious law and the entire material of all four madzhab. Secondly, ijtihād fi'l-madzhab. This concerned actual pupils of the four religious law schools. Thirdly, ijtihād fi'l-masā'il. This was ijtihād in the strict sense, which made legal decisions possible in cases which had not arisen previously. At such times, members of the different schools reached decisions on different principles, e.g. the hanafites on istihsān, the principle of the best solution, the mālikites on the requirements of istislāh (the public interest, masaha), and mostly validated the point of view of analogy, qiyās. We know that after the tenth century (some say only the twelfth), the doors of ijtihād closed, and after that, independent opinions on matters of religious law were accepted only in exceptional cases. The shica did not accept that, and regarded their experts on religious law as mujtahidūn. From the nineteenth century on, those that called for reform (islāh) argued for those doors to be opened, e.g. in the abolition of polygamy in the Tunisian review of law in 1957.2 The problem was, of course, that no one dared formulate the new bases of possible new legislation. The Salafi movement in particular regarded the opening of the doors of ijtihād as permissible in the field of practical problems and the new tasks of the community. The opposite of ijtihād is taqlīd. In theology and law, this means the imitation of the Prophet, his "Companions", and the following generation (after the eleventh and twelfth centuries this becomes commonplace in Islam, and by then al-Ghazālī was objecting to it). Even to this day no consensus has been reached over the acceptance or rejection of ijtihād. Islamist groups demand that their leaders be blindly obeyed, and naturally the liberal and reformist voices that suffer defeat after defeat make a case for rational legislation.