The Islamization of Knowledge and Some Methodological Issues in Paradigm Building The General Case of Social Science with a Special Focus on Economics

Abstract

I. Scientific Justification for the Islamization of Knowledge
The need for the Islamization of knowledge as a means to revive the
leadership of the Islamic Umma in the world has been explained over a period
of many years by Dr. ‘AbdulHamid ’AbuSulayman. A clear conceptualization
of this Islamization, based on Tawhid, was first proposed by Professor
Isma‘il Raji al Faruqi 1982 and presented as both a theoretical paradigm and
a practical scientific research program.
Both the theory and program have been attacked as unscientific, because
they are not descriptive but rather are normative. They call for the reorganization
of knowledge into a new framework that does not grow out of the old
secular framework of modem thought. Furthermore, Professor al Faruqi’s
paradigm and praxis call for the pursuit of value-laden goals, that is, for the
“ought-to-be” not only as an end in itself but as a guide and methdology for the
study of what “is.”
A thesis of this article is that the whole concept known as “Islamization of
Knowledge,” developed by Drs. ’AbuSulayman and al Faruqi, is thoroughly
scientific in the sense used by modem historians and philosophers of science.
Theoreticians in the Islamization of Knowledge claim they are laying the ...