EDITORIAL

Abstract

We report with great sadness the death of Victor Danner, a friend of
Islam and Muslims, a graduate of Georgetown and Harvard, and Chairman
of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University,
BloomingtOn, Indiana. Darner's latest publication was The Islamic Traditiontion
: An Introduction. W have been inviting Muslim anti non-Mush scholars
from time to time to present their responses to the International Institute
of Islamic Thought’s caIl for the Islamization of Knowledge. So far, we have
been very lucky to have had the opportunity to listen to the late Fazlur Rahman,
Sayyed H. Nasr, Abdulaziz Sachedina and others who joined this debate
at the IIIT headquarters. Some of these responses have been published in
various issues of AJISS.
Victor Danner treated us to his response on May 15, 1989, when he
presented his paper, which appears in this issue under the title of “Western
Evolutionism in the Muslim World,” at the IIIT headquarters. In this article,
he launches an eloquent plea for the rediscovery and reexploration of the
various schools of thought in Islam and their subsequent adaptation to the
needs and circumstances faced by contemporary Muslims. He reminds us
that past attempts at reform by Muslim intellectuals were based on a readaptation
of the traditional techniques of Islam which, when presented in a fresh
manner as a solution to the needs faced by their own contemporaries, gave
the doctrine of tawhid “a powerful radiance that had a convincing allure to
it.” This is followed by an examination of the origins of evolutionary thinking
in the West, how its eventual acceptance and spread throughout the West
ultimately displaced Christian beliefs and institutions on a massive scale,
and how the resulting secular civiIization produced by it is threatening to
sweep aside and destroy traditional Islamic civilization. In closing, he states
his hope that a better understanding of this phenomenon among the Muslim
intelligentsia and the people at large will cause them to wake up to this danger
and begin to work for the preservation of the ”traditional culture of Islam.”
Our first article in this issue is by Imaduddin Khalil, and addresses the
Qur’an’s relationship vis-his modem science. After ruling out the Qur’an
as a book or textbook of scientific knowledge, he proceeds to discuss the
philosophy and aims of science and the basic principles of Islam. He begins
with the role of humanity on earth as the khaEfuh of Allah, moves on to
the principles of tawazun (balance) and taskhir (an Islamic concept stating
that the world and nature have been made subservient to humanity), and
closes with the principle of a link between creation and the Creator. Khalil
views the Qur’anic methodology as being a “methodology of discovery” of ...