Islamization of Knowledge

Abstract

Islamic science, as an active creative agent, once imparted life and motion to Islamic civilization and society. It is now confined within the walls of old schools and imprisoned among its classical books. Having embraced the new sciences and accepted Western behavioral modes of thinking, the Muslim intelligentsia has made Islam into an abstract spirit fossilized inside traditional forms of ancient mores, customs, rites, and rituals. This situation alone pmides enough justification to reconstruct the methodology of Islamic sciences, but the on-going Islamization movement makes such an attempt even more pertinent. “To recast knowledge as Islam relates to it, is to Islamize it. . . . To this end, the methodological categories of Islam . . . must replace the Western categories and determine the perception of ordering reality.”l This article is an attempt to contribute to reconstructing the methodology of social sciences with specific reference to political science. This is accomplished by identifying and exposing, through systematic contrast with Islamic principles, the weaknesses of elements and key concepts molded in the crucible of Western culture and civilization. This is essential because Islamization warrants, ipso facto, liberating people from the world-view of the West so that they can strive toward that state of perfection reached in Madinah under Divine guidance during the age of the last Prophet (SAAS) of Islam ...