Issues In Islamization Of Human Knowledge

This paper offers a number of valuable insights gained from a long engagement with Islamic as well as global issues, with traditional as well as contemporary concerns. It not only surveys the field along with the powers and challenges at work, but also charts a way out of the present impasse. More immediately, it offers an updated review of the progress of the Islamization of Knowledge project and a timely clarification of the very concept itself. Clearly, that concept, though responsible for generating worldwide debate and action, has been so often misinterpreted and/or inflated. The gradational nature of the Islamizing project is all too obvious, and was never far from the minds of the authors of the 1982 declaration. It would certainly have been juvenile to think otherwise. And yet there is a need now to stress, as the present paper does, the ambitious (but also imperative) nature of the enterprise. For, despite the highly commendable effort invested in further elaboration and, in some brave instances, attempted implementation of the concept, the process of the Islamization of Knowledge remains at an intial, some might even say, prenatal stage. Much work needs to be done, many talents galvanized and resources pooled, institutions set up or reorganized, etc., before a truly genuine and sustainable realization of the concept can be said to have begun. Such a realistic vision needs to accompany and inform every stage of the way. To be lulled into a false or premature sense of achievement is a costly setback at a time when standing idly by for a day may have serious consequences for decades to come.

Section 1; Introduction -- Section 2; Scope -- Section 3; Sources and categories of IOK -- Section 4; Rationale for IOK -- Section 5; The meaning of IOK -- Section 6; What does IOK involve -- Section 7; Reviewer and critics.

In 1977 (1397 A.H.) some of the most committed and concerned Muslim scholars from around the world were invited to attend a major seminar in Switzerland to address the crisis of thought faced by the Muslim Ummah. The seminar reflected a general consensus about the need to reform contemporary Islamic thought and to redefine the intellectual and academic basis for the Islamization of knowledge At the beginning of the new Hijrah century 1981 (1401 A.H.) the International Institute of Islamic Thought was incorporated in the U.S. as an Islamic academic and research Institute committed towards working for the reconstruction of Muslim thought and the Islamization of Knowledge. As one of its first undertakings, the IIIT, in cooperation with the National Hijrah Centenary Celebration Committee and the International Islamic University of Islamabad, Pakistan, sponsored the Second International Conference on the Islamization of Knowledge ín 1982 (1402 A.H.). Held in Pakistan, the conference provided a world-wide forum for Muslim scholars and thinkers to report developments in Islamic thought and exchange ideas. This book focuses upon 17 selected papers presented at this conference by the distinguished scholars. They embrace the critical topics of the "Perspective on Islamization of Knowledge," the "Perspective on the Islamization of Disciplines” and "Islamizing Individual Disciplines."

The Reform in Higher Education in Muslim Societies is in sum a paradigm shift in perspective driven by important considerations including the aims of education itself. It may require reforming existing disciplines, inventing new ones, as well as working in conjunction with current knowledge(s) and discourses by taking effective account of the ethical, spiritual norms of Muslim society, the guiding principles that it operates under, which in turn mark the underlying basis of its makeup and spiritual identity. Rather than creating divisions, reform of Higher Education in Muslim Societies recognizes the plurality and diversity of the modern networked world, and seeks to replace sterile and uniform approaches to knowledge with a broader and more creative understanding of reality as lived on different soils and different cultures. Moderation, balance and effective communication are paramount features of the underlying philosophy.

The book is a program which seeks to construct an intellectual framework for Islamic methodology with a view to realizing practical training in the thoughtful investigation of issues related to knowledge in various fields. The book’s title affirms the distinctive types of integration that characterize Islamic methodology, including integration of sources, means, and schools of thought, as well as existing realities with desired ideals etc. This is fully consistent with human nature, as variety is fundamental to the functions people perform and skills they master. The work essentially makes the case that fundamental to any Muslim recovery is laying the foundations of sound thinking and values that integrate the two main sources of knowledge: Revelation and Reality (that is the created worlds both physical, societal and psychological) under the umbrella of Tawhid. This concept of integration implies using both human theoretical conceptualization and practical experimental investigation whilst also affirming the need to apply human capabilities in understanding the divine text, and acquiring sound knowledge of the physical world in terms of its resources, as well as accumulated past and present human experiences. The aim being to vitalize human potential and creativity.