Muhammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr (full name Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭāhir ibn ʿĀshūr; 1879 – August 1973) was a graduate of University of Ez-Zitouna and a well known Islamic scholar. He studied classical Islamic scholarship with reform-minded scholars. He became a judge then Shaykh al-Islām in 1932. He was a writer and author on the subject of reforming Islamic education and jurisprudence. He is best remembered for his Qur'anic exegesis, al-Tahrir wa'l-tanwir (The Verification and Enlightenment).
Early life
Muhammad al-Tahir ibn Ashur was born in Tunis in 1879 to an affluent family and died in 1973 at age 94. He was of Andalusian origin. The family had shown dedication to the pursuit of knowledge for generations. His grandfather was especially renowned. When he entered Zaytuna, care was made to provide him the best teachers. He was a teacher at Zaytuna all his life. His masterpiece is the Maqasid al-Shari'ah al-Islamiyyah, the Intents, or Higher Goals of Islamic Law, published in 1946. He is famous for rejecting Habib Bourguiba's (president of Tunisia) request for a fatwa to justify abandoning the fast of the month of Ramadan because it harmed productivity. He responded by stating "Prescribed for you is fasting", and announced on the radio, "God has spoken the truth and Bourguiba has spoken falsehood." He was, as a result, dismissed from his post.
Influenced by a visit to Tunisia by Muhammad Abduh, Ibn Ashur combined knowledge of the classics with a desire to revive Islamic civilization. He positioned himself as a bridge between the classical Islamic legal heritage and the needs of a modern world. His references to the great works of law are respectful and at times praiseworthy, but he does not hesitate to point out shortcomings. Responding to modern challenges to Islamic traditions, Ibn Ashur called for substantive reforms in Islamic education. His work on the ultimate purposes of Shari'a represented an attempt to revive the maqasid theory of Shatibi and an effort to renew Islamic legal theory.
Personal views
Ibn Ashur intended his work to be relevant for the modern world. He claimed that the discipline of usul al-fiqh (islamic jurisprudence) had reached its limits and become over-burdened with methodological technicalities. Appropriate legal responses to situations in the modern world cannot be found by delving deeper and deeper into the meaning of a word.
Scholarly work
Ibn Ashur asserted the view that language is fundamentally ambiguous and is not enough to determine the intent of a speaker. Further, while written words are less subject to distortion, the spoken word is actually more likely to convey the speaker's intent. The entire field surrounding the word must be considered. In contrast, the return of generations to Medina to assess the meaning of a statement shows the importance of understanding context.
Ibn Ashur questioned the juridical weight of an isolated hadith in determining legislation. Instead, legislative value should be sought from the totality of shari'ah. He suggested that comments seemingly to the contrary from Imam al-Shafi'i and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal must be distortions of their work. He worried that taking a solitary (ahad) hadith in isolation from the body of shari'ah would end the quest for understanding in context. Preferring a solitary hadith over a rational deduction based on context would be problematic. Ibn Ashur believes that al-Shafi'i was misunderstood as accepting a solitary hadith over the larger context and that Ahmad ibn Hanbal was misrepresented as accepting a weak hadith over qiyas. Ibn Ashur says that a weak hadith is open to error, and qiyas is open to error, but in addition, the weak hadith may be a lie and the consequence of using it would be worse than using qiyas.
Ibn Ashur claimed that the basis of shari'ah must be rational. He said, "One of the greatest things required by the universality of the shari'ah is that its rules be equal for all the communities following it to the utmost extent possible, because similarity in the flow of rules and laws is a help for achieving group unity in the community."