Al Faruqi and Beyond Future Directions in Islamization of Knowledge

Abstract

Ismlil was born in an influential family in 1341 AH/1922 AC in Palestine
during the British Mandate. He received his early education in traditional
Islamic schools and his college education from the American University,
Beirut. At age 24, he was appointed as governor of Gallilee-the last
Palestinian, before the Zionist occupation. Forced to migrate, his family took
refuge in neighboring Lebanon. Having thus experienced this “fall” at the
very onset of what was promising to be a brilliant political career in an
otherwise independent Palestine, the refugee in Isma’il tumed toward the higher
reaches of modem education in the contemporary West.
Ismlil concentrated in philosophy first at Harvard and then at Indiana,
where he earned his doctoral degree. He spent four years at Al Azhar in
Egypt, followed by two years at the School of Divinity at McGill, and two
years at the newly established Islamic Research Institute in Islamabad, Pakistan,
which gave him ample opportunity to apply his philosophy to religion or,
more appropriately, to apply his religion to modem secular philosophy. This
is what gave “the wounded Palestinian” a new weapon with which to start
on a course of an intellectual encounter with the West. His books on On
Arabism, The Origins of Zionism in Judaism, and The Christian Ethics came
in a succession in the 1960’s. Naturally, as Rahman (1406 AH/1986 AC) pointed
out, while involved in this undertaking, he disturbed some and antagonized
others. What is amazing is that in doing this, the “Arab Warrior” conquered
himself ...