Many Arab secularists blame the problems and lack of freedom on what is sometimes referred to as ‘the closing of the Arab mind’. This is a reference to the ending of the practice of ‘ijtihad’. The direct translation of the word is ‘effort’, but it relates to the interpretation of religious problems not precisely covered by the Koran or the Hadith – the reports of what the Prophet Muhammad did and said. For several centuries any learned Muslim scholar could come up with original thinking on religious questions, but by the end of the Sunni Abbasid caliphate (750–1258) it was declared that the
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