Reframing the humanities and social sciences in line with the “Quranic revelation”
The primary aim of the Islamization of Knowledge trend consists in dragging scientific disciplines out of the “materialist” framework within which they are laid out. They take their cue from Mamadou Diouf who calls for a study of science and technical progress without the “colonial parenthesis”. They quote Jack Goody for whom European academics (Marx, Weber, Elias, Braudel et al.) have “« one way or another contributed to the great narrative that has turned Europe's historical experience both into an exception and a benchmark for the history of the rest of the world – having in the process deprived the rest of the world of its own history »
”, as one reviewer summarised . They constantly hark back to what they rate a “golden age” of Islamic civilization, between the second and the fourth century of the Hijra, a high point in both literary and scientific fields (mathematics, physics and medicine in particular).
Their critical approach to “Europe” or the “West” combines with the assertion that “Islam” as an overall way of life, is in a position to propose a fresh framework and vision compared to other faiths and civilisations. By emphasizing the foundation of the Muslim faith, the Tawhid[1], they set forth a link of complementarity and unification between the visible world and the invisible, between reason and revelation, between thought and action, between soul and body, between the individual and the collective, between belief and science, between theory and action, between faith and reason. A just combination of these elements, they add, has yielded in the past – and will in the future – a balanced society and civilisation, that is, in Quranic terms, wasatin[2], founded in justice and fraternity. They hold that, unlike what they call the West, the Islamic civilisation has never known in the past any conflict between “religion” and “science”.
According to this new “tawhidi paradigm”, humans have an exceptional place in the universe. They must assume a Khilafah[3] Role. This role finds its expression in the realisation of the umrân[4] as defined by Ibn Khaldun[5] . Scientific and technological development is one of the necessary conditions to fulfil this purpose. Several Quranic verses are quoted in support of this mission ascribed to man, to whom the whole of what exists in the universe has been subjected. This civilising mission, focussed on scientific progress and the controlled exploitation of natural resources is presented on the one hand as a major form of “worship of the creator” and on the other as an imperative duty for each Muslims individually(fardh al-'ayn[6]), as well as to peoples or groups (fardh al-kifāya[7]), countries, institutions.
The advocates of the Islamisation of Knowledge posit a rupture marked by the Quran in the history of methodology through the introduction of observation, evidence, reasoning. This contribution, they explain, has lead to the development of specific sciences such as the juridical method (usul uk fiqh) and the methodology of authentication of the doings and sayings attributed to Muhammad (hadith), and to further already existing sciences such as physics, optics and mathematics.
In order to advance knowledge, they counterpoise two “books”, one of which was “written” (the Quran) and the other “created” (the universe). The epistemological principle they uphold is one according to which science is never but a discovery of the “divine laws” as applying to the universe and to humanity with a view to establish justice. The combination of both readings should advance the establishment of a “human civilisation” rather than a “material civilisation” a symbiosis between men and other creatures, a “global civilisation” in the words of Taha Jabir al-Alwani, an Iraqi academic and champion of The Islamization of Knowledge. In the 20th and 21st century, they claim, the Muslim world has proved unable to read either of these books hence its civilizational loss of ground whilst the Western world pursued a blinkered reading which may have enabled it to grasp the mechanisms ruling matter and the universe but at the expenses of a spiritual dimension.
