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What is ijtihad?

In general it means making a personal decision of how Islamic law should be interpreted and applied when no exact law or interpretation exists. There also seems to be a lot of debate as to exactly who is allowed or should make those interpretations. Once the Islamic religious leadership makes a ruling; the decree is not allowed to be challenged (with very rare exceptions).


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Copied from:
http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/ijtihad/1.htm

Ibn al'Athir defines 'ijtihad' as the effort and endeavor undertaken for attaining some objective. He further remarks that the word occurs in many hadith.


On the same page:


the Usulis do not conceive ijtihad in the above sense. By ijtihad' they mean the knowledge of the ahkam of the Shari'ah from sources and grounds whose validity has been affirmed by the Shari'ah, and it is by using such sources, principles and dicta that the mujtahid is able to meet the needs of contingent issues and events of life.

Accordingly, the result of ijtihad in the context of deduction of ahkam of the Shari'ah is to refer new furu` to the fundamental usul (which are the general precepts of the Book and the Sunnah) and to apply the usul to their corresponding instances. It is by means of ijtihad that sufficient evidence or hujjah regarding a hukm of the Shari'ah is secured for answers to emergent and contingent issues. Ijtihad is not meant for providing presumption or conjecture. It is this sound meaning of ijtihad that the Usulis have accepted, and whosoever has faith in Islam and believes in its eternal and immortal character is bound to accept it in accordance with the precepts of the Shari'ah and the dictates of reason. Because, it is not possible to posit the ahkam of the Shari`ah for issues for which there is no specific express test without sufficient evidence and valid grounds, and this is a conception which Muhammad Amin al'Astarabadi also accepts.


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Also see:
Al-Tawhid
The Role of Ijtihad in Legislation

http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/ijtihad-legislation.htm
Contents are long and to complex to post here.

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copied from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijtihad


Ijtihad is the making of a decision in Islamic law (sharia) by personal effort (jihad), independently of any school (madhhab) of jurisprudence (fiqh).as opposed to taqlid, copying or obeying without question.
Ijtihad is mainly associated with the Shi'a Muslim Jafari school of jurisprudence. To be valid and accepted it has to be rooted in the Qur'an and the hadith and it is required that no established doctrine rules the case. A mujtahid is an Islamic scholar who is competent to interpret sharia by ijtihad.


Under History on the same page:


The Qur’an commands ijtihâd. In early Islam it was common practice and later it integrated with early Islamic philosophy. It slowly fell out of practice in Sunni fiqh for several reasons, particularly due to the efforts of the Asharite theologians, most notably al-Ghazali whose book The Incoherence of the Philosophers was the most celebrated statement of the view that ijtihâd was leading to errors of over-confidence in judgement.

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Copied from:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ijtihad

ijtihad - the endeavor of a Moslem scholar to derive a rule of divine law from the Koran and Hadith without relying on the views of other scholars; by the end of the 10th century theologians decided that debate on such matters would be closed and Muslim theology and law were frozen; "some reform-minded Islamic scholars believe that reopening ijtihad is a prerequisite for the survival of Islam"