CHAPTER IV : The Islamic Worldview and Humanitarian Ethical Concepts

The Islamic Worldview and Humanitarian Ethical Concepts -- 122

Beyond Vision: Lest We Sow the Sea -- 124

How Do We Develop Islamic Social Sciences and Live Out

the Islamic Vision? – 130

chapter iv

The Islamic Worldview

and Humanitarian Ethical Concepts

NO observant student of Islam could fail to be aware of the rich store of humanitarian ethical concepts and values embodied in the Qur’an, the Prophetic Sunnah, and the lives of the Prophet’s Companions – or the gems to be found in Islamic writings, ancient and modern alike. By the same token, however, such a student is bound to note that the reality of life and relationships to be observed in modern Islamic societies fails to reflect many of these noble concepts and ideas. The reason for this is that the thinking of the Muslim community is dominated by a kind of atavistic attachment to traditions, practices, and applications of the past, while the mentality of individual Muslims is marked by a passivity and apathy that have served to deepen the rift between the values and ideals embodied in the Islamic tradition on one hand, and the reality of Muslims’ lives and relationships on the other. The unfortunate out-come of this rift is a Muslim community that is fragmented, backward, and marginalized – having relegated itself to the periphery of modern human history.

Values and concepts are clearly the tools by means of which the worldview or vision of a people or community is translated into concrete action. If such a vision becomes unclear or distorted, however, such values and concepts lose their effectiveness – since, without a clear conceptual connection to the vision that underlies the life of the community, its members lose the inspiration, motive force, and sense of purpose they need in order to act in accordance with it in their daily lives and relations with others.

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Consequently, it will be necessary to identify Islamic values, principles, and concepts and trace them back to the Muslim community’s foundational vision. Having done this, we will need to instill these concepts educationally in the minds and hearts of individual Muslims and apply them on the level of integrated, interactive social, political, and economic institutions. In this way, we can produce a vital, positive, effective Muslim community prepared to build civilizations and make history. It will be necessary to establish research centers, while the efforts of thinkers and scholars will need to be coordinated in such a way as to present an integrated Islamic worldview to the Muslim com-munity in a clearly thought-out and cogent manner, which clarifies all relevant conceptualizations and sets out a plan for reform. Only in this way will we be able to build confidence in the present and renew people’s hope in the future. At the same time, we need to help the Muslim community’s academics, reformers, educators, and parents to become aware of their responsibilities and carry out their assigned roles, thereby enabling both themselves and their progeny to fulfill their God-given spiritual longings.

It will be clear from the foregoing that the Qur’anic worldview presents a realistic vision of existence in all areas, while providing guidance for the way in which we conduct ourselves in relation to both the laws of the cosmos and our own human nature. This vision takes as its starting point the concept of the absolute unity of the Divine Self and the corresponding principle of the unity and complementarity of the cosmos and its multitudinous components. It follows from this principle that: (1) an awareness of the brotherhood of all humanity is ingrained within each of us; (2) we have a human and social responsibility to live purposefully, morally, and constructively; and (3) the structure of both human life and the universe as a whole rests on a foundation of unity in diversity, and diversity in unity.

Another fact that becomes apparent here is that without a clear worldview or vision of existence, no human community will be able to build and develop a culture or civilization that is vital and effective. For, as we learn from the historical accounts of bygone nations that lost their flexibility and vitality, these were nations whose thought and vision had become muddled and confused and which, as a consequence,

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had lost sight of their goal and purpose. This loss of vision and purpose led in its turn to a disintegration of their social structure and a loss of dynamism:

ٱلَّذِينَ طَغَوۡاْ فِى ٱلۡبِلَـٰدِ (١١) فَأَكۡثَرُواْ فِيہَا ٱلۡفَسَادَ (١٢)فَصَبَّ عَلَيۡهِمۡ رَبُّكَ سَوۡطَ عَذَابٍ (١٣) إِنَّ رَبَّكَ لَبِٱلۡمِرۡصَادِ (١٤)  سُوۡرَةُ الفَجر

[It was they] who transgressed all bounds of equity all over their lands, and brought about great corruption therein: and therefore thy Sustainer let loose upon them a scourge of suffering: for, verily, thy Sustainer is ever on the watch! (surah al-Fajr, 89:11–14)

سُنَّةَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلَّتِى قَدۡ خَلَتۡ مِن قَبۡلُ‌ۖ وَلَن تَجِدَ لِسُنَّةِ ٱللَّهِ تَبۡدِيلاً۬ (٢٣)  سُوۡرَةُ الفَتْح

such being God’s way which has ever obtained in the past – and never wilt thou find any change in God’s way! (surah al-Fath, 48:23)

Beyond Vision: Lest We Sow the Sea

In order to help the Muslim community recover its vision, purposeful-ness, morality, and dynamism, we will need to undertake an earnest, objective, critical reexamination of this community’s heritage and history in such a way that we are able to distinguish the good from the bad, the useful from the useless. In so doing, we must not be deterred by cultural taboos, ignorance, clamorous protestations, or material enticements. If we purge our intellectual, educational, and social spheres of weaknesses, prejudices, and distortions, we will be able to nurture an objective, Qur’anically grounded, global perspective that derives its inspiration from the wisdom embodied in the life of the Prophet and the ways in which he applied the teachings of the Qur’an to real-life situations. Having done this, we will be able to overcome the mental rigidity that has taken such a toll on Muslim society, robbing it of drive and vitality. To this end, we are called upon to instill the Qur’anic worldview in young Muslim minds, hearts, and consciences – including the love of God, the love of knowledge, the love of mastery, and a correct understanding of the concept of stewardship together with its underlying ethic and purposefulness.

How, then, are Muslim children to be raised with a Qur’anic view of themselves and the world? How are we to shape an educationally sound Islamic discourse of faith, which will nurture, rather than negate, our children’s innate instinct to believe in the divine unity, to love God, and to live in accordance with the ethical principles

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expressed in the divine revelation? If we fail to develop such a discourse, we run the risk of continuing to form young people’s characters through threat, intimidation, and a sense of superiority – the outcome being human beings who are passive, individualistic, and self-centered.

How are we to draw inspiration from the Prophet’s example in such a way that Muslim children get a clear sense of his moral character, his wisdom, and the exemplar he was? How can we begin to see the Qur’an and the message of Islam flowing through the life of the Muslim community as blood flows through the veins of a living organ-ism, transforming it into a civilization of goodness, justice, and peace? And how are we to see the effects of this civilization in time and place in the life and structures of the community? Can we cease viewing the life of the Prophet as nothing more than a series of military campaigns and begin instead to draw on its full riches so that our educational curricula reflect the true vision of the Companions, which was inspired by both the Qur’an and Prophet’s example? We want to see for ourselves, and convey to our children how it was that by means of this vision, the Companions achieved self-realization in joy and sorrow, hardship and ease, even in sacrifice and martyrdom – and how, in so doing, they defended the Muslim community, their families, and their religion just as they defended human rights, honor, and dignity, yet with motives untainted by a propensity for aggression, greed, or unbridled ambition and base passions.

Knowledge and understanding are, first and foremost, the craft of thinkers, scholars, academicians, and intellectuals, as well as that of schools and teachers. The parents’ tasks are, first and foremost, child-rearing and the education and refinement of their children’s spirit and conscience, and guidance in their children developing proper conduct. This is not, of course, to deny the auxiliary role played by the teacher and the school; nor is it to deny the impact of the media and the social environment. However, we must beware of confusing roles and neglecting or disregarding the responsibility to be borne by both the home and the school, lest we undermine the performance of either.

With all due appreciation for the educational role and impact of the media, it must also be acknowledged that at the present time, the media consists primarily of a conglomerate of governmental and

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commercial institutions influenced by interests and forces over which parents have little direct control. In fact, many such institutions work at direct cross-purposes with the educational goals that parents are striving to achieve. Herein lies the importance of the educational role of the family. Children who have received a positive, healthy upbringing will frequently respond disapprovingly to nonconstructive or negative messages they receive through the media, whereas this is not the case with children who have not received such an upbringing.

If, for example, a child who has not received a morally and spiritually sound upbringing watches a television program that features an ingenious way of carrying out a crime – a burglary, for example – he may not being limited by a strong moral boundary, copy the crime given certain social factors. As for a child who has received a sound upbringing, he will most likely pay little attention to the scene, since he has no inclination toward aggression or criminal behavior. In fact, seeing such a thing on television might arouse a reaction of condemnation. However, he might also benefit from what he has seen at some point if he finds himself in a situation that requires him to get himself out of a fix, to prevent the commission of such a crime.

At the same time, of course, it should be recognized that in the absence of a strong familial and parental role in a child’s upbringing, continual exposure to the commercial media with its tendentious, unwholesome, and corrupting content is bound to have a negative impact on a child’s mentality and spiritual and emotional state. Families should not simply look on passively, then cast the blame on the media for the effects of their own negligence, since it is the family, and the mother in particular, that lays the foundation for a child’s basic way of thinking and feeling. This way of thinking and feeling in turn constitutes the prism through which children see and understand events, then translate them into concepts and values which govern their actions and their manner of relating to others both now and in the future.

What this means is that thinkers, educators, and reformers need to pay particular attention to writings and institutions that concern them-selves with research on education from a cultural, scientific perspective – and then make such research available to parents by whatever means

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possible, particularly now that we live in the age of electronic mail and the Internet.

Education in Islamic countries is, for the most part, represented by an ‘ignorant’ child squatting on the floor or seated at a desk and being dictated to by a ‘teacher.’ The child then memorizes what the teacher has said and repeats it back to him. The lesson consists entirely of what the teacher has to say, which is then regurgitated, digested or undigested, by the student. Education in active, responsive, productive, creative communities consists of exploration, activity, movement, and practice in workshops and laboratories, libraries, playing fields and tournaments, and on trips to places of relevance to what is being taught and learned, while the curricula used include not only books, but in addition, models, presentations, documentaries, illustrated materials, and discussions.

In short, education among those participating in more innovative education has long been a matter of thought, movement, and action. In other words, life among them is a matter of action, building, and creativity. As for the education of most people, it has long been a matter of the tedious repetition of words and phrases, many of which are little more than rhetorical bluster uttered by ‘leaders’ into the ears of ‘followers’ – by those in command (the petty pharaohs) into the ears of obsequious, hypocritical subordinates, and by semi-ignorant ‘teachers’ into the ears of miserable, persecuted, ‘ignorant’ learners. (I say this with sincere apologies to those teachers who themselves have been victims of the educational system in Islamic countries, and who have been poorly trained, poorly paid, and ill-treated both professionally and socially.) Consequently, it comes as no surprise to find that life within the Muslim community has become synonymous with empty words, empty dreams, and empty hopes – while among others, it is synonymous with action, searching, investigation, development, the use of resources, mastery, and creativity.

يَـٰٓأَيُّہَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ لِمَ تَقُولُونَ مَا لَا تَفۡعَلُونَ (٢) ڪَبُرَ مَقۡتًا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَن تَقُولُواْ مَا لَا تَفۡعَلُونَ (٣)  سُوۡرَةُ الصَّف

“O you who have attained to faith! Why do you say one thing and do another? Most loathsome is it in the sight of God that you say what you do not do!”(surah al-Saff, 61:2–3.) Accordingly, the individual in the society whose educational system is sound and interactive becomes a source of productivity, power, and wealth – while, in our present society, he becomes a recipient of unemployment, weakness, and poverty.

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Hence, if thinkers and reformers are serious about sowing the earth and not the sea, as it were, so as to help the Muslim community to recover its strength, drive, and constructive, creative potential as a steward of God’s gifts, they have no choice but to work patiently and diligently to reform, purify, and renew their culture, a process that will require the reform of their educational curricula and methods of child-rearing – and the recovery of their original Qur’anic vision of themselves and the world.

When we have begun at last to concern ourselves with thought, knowledge, with understanding and the university, with the workshop, with the school, and with parental nurture as part of the educational process; when we have enriched our cities, neighborhoods, and towns with libraries, our languages and cultures with translations that broaden our horizons and increase our knowledge, our institutions with expertise, experience, and competence, and our factories with skilled labor; when we have freed our thinking from the shackles of inertia and our relationships from anachronistic strictures that have robbed the Muslim community of its creative impetus; when the family, the school, the workshop, and the factory have become the object of care and concern – in other words, when the individual human being in all his or her potential and creativity receives the nurture and encouragement he or she needs in order to become a fully contributing, honored member of Muslim society, then, and then only, will we know that we are living out the Qur’anic worldview. Then, and then only, will we know that thinkers, leaders, reformers, educators, academics, and parents have successfully fulfilled their respective roles, and that the wheel of Islamic civilization has begun to turn once more. Then, and then only, will Islam and the Muslim community occupy a position of honor and strength – providing guidance for human individuals and societies, lifting high the banner of mutual consultation, justice, brotherhood, and peace, and dispelling the dark clouds of backwardness, injustice, tyranny, and corruption.

If, on that day, the Muslim community anywhere in the world finds itself in need of more skilled professionals, they will come without hesitation. As things are now, however, our religious, social, and educational institutions are headed exclusively by those who have

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exhibited poor performance in their respective fields – while, in the meantime, we reserve our resources and recognition for those fields that we expect to be lucrative and prestigious, such as medicine and engineering. However, given the poor performance of our social system, we eventually lose the very physicians and engineers on whose training the Muslim community had spent long years and exorbitant sums because of their decision to leave their homelands and their community of faith and travel to the ends of the earth in search of a decent wage and a life of dignity. If we truly honored our thinkers, educators, scholars, physicians, engineers, and others who perform such services for their communities with the proper preparation and professional consideration, they would not leave their homelands in search of a better life elsewhere, and if we needed more individuals with skills like theirs, we would have enough and more of them available to us.

Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the importance of means and methods, be they material or otherwise, and whether they pertain to education, training, or preparation. After all, they are a necessary expression of human nature, the laws of the cosmos, and the Qur’anic worldview alike. At the same time, however, such means and methods need to be in good hands – that is, in the hands of people who are effective, active, and competent mentally, psychologically, spiritually, and doctrinally, and hence conscientious and diligent concerning the manner in which they are used and developed.

The time has come for all of us to take our lives with the seriousness they deserve, and to base the life of our Muslim community on the Qur’anic perspective on human beings and the world in which they live. It is time for us to purify and rebuild our culture and provide our children with the proper spiritual, intellectual, and cultural foundation. In this way, Muslims will be able to achieve self-realization, understand the meaning of their existences, and be able to be a blessing to themselves, their family, and their community.

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How Do We Develop Islamic Social Sciences and Live Out the Islamic Vision?

Before bringing this work to a close, I would like to devote a discussion to the issue of developing the Islamic social sciences by means of which we will generate sound Islamic thought. There has been a good deal of controversy and confusion over the true nature of ‘the Islamization of knowledge’ and the way in which it is to be achieved. One of the most important reasons for this is the lack of clarity with which the issue of developing the Islamic social sciences is presented, as well as the failure to clarify the nature of their content and purpose and how they are related to the Islamic heritage, Islamic thought, and the Western social sciences, respectively.

Consequently, this issue needs to be presented clearly and straight-forwardly in all its fundamental details to students of both traditional Islamic studies and the Western social sciences. The reason for this is that the Islamization of knowledge and the Islamization of the social sciences are two sides of a single coin, and until we can clarify the link between them, as well as the link between them and the traditional Islamic sciences or disciplines and the social sciences, confusion will continue to reign and the currently ongoing ‘dialogue of the deaf’ over the meaning and nature of the Islamization of knowledge, as well as the action plan required to bring it about, will see no end.

In order to overcome this ambiguity, we need to define the nature of the traditional scholastic Islamic sciences as they are engaged in at the present time, as well as their uses and their programs of study. Additionally, we need to determine the nature of contemporary social sciences, both secular and Islamic, as well as the way in which they are studied and the functions they perform in contemporary life. Lastly, we need to identify the methodological and ideational relationship between contemporary Islamic social sciences and both the Islamic heritage and modern Western social sciences on the level of sources, ideational content, and study and research methods.

Let us begin, then, with an examination of the issue of thought and the traditional Islamic sciences, that is, the traditional mode of examining the Islamic heritage, on the level of content, function, and the role such sciences play in the life of the Muslim community. Not

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surprisingly, the juristic (legal) aspect of the Islamic tradition receives the greatest emphasis in Islamic thought as it pertains to the life of the Muslim community. The role of jurisprudence in the life of human societies is to translate the community’s doctrines, unchanging principles, and values into laws, legal rulings, and judgments which govern and order the life of the society and the relationships among its members and institutions.

Islamic jurisprudence has, from its inception, derived its thought and content from the examples set by the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs, including the arrangements, practices, and applications that marked the life of the Prophet and the lives of the Companions who governed the Muslim community after his death. With the termination of the rightly guided caliphate and the era of the Companions’ rule,1 things deteriorated to the point where the sacredness of the city of Madinah itself was attacked, with the catastrophic result that the scholars representing that school were banished from the public sphere. Thus, began the scholastic era in which Islamic thought proper was relegated solely to the sphere of the mosque, personal status laws, and private, individual dealings and affairs.2

The conditions that had prevailed during the days of the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs remained essentially unchanged for quite a while – and the examples set by the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs in their arrangements and the details established at this time – remained the ideal models for the ongoing life of the Muslim community. Indeed, the precedents established by the Prophet, his Companions, and the rightly guided caliphs constituted the most important source of scholastic Islamic thought. However, with the passage of time and the growing isolation, which was imposed upon religious scholars and the religious tradition, such scholars exhibited a tendency to go overboard in recording the texts of the Prophetic Sunnah, both those which were well-attested and those which were not – thereby resorting to subjugation through the appeal to sanctity and the rhetoric of intimidation as a means of concealing their political and intellectual impotence.

The ongoing ideational and political isolation and powerlessness suffered by students of the Islamic legal sciences led, over time, to a

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worsening intellectual rigidity and inertia that manifested itself in the practice of relying on literalistic rules, regulations, and precepts derived from practices, arrangements, and conditions many of which were no longer of any relevance to later Islamic societies. This, more-over, is precisely the situation we are facing in Muslim societies today, whose circumstances, store of knowledge, potentials, and challenges differ radically from those of the eras in which Islamic juristic rulings were originally derived. What this means is that many Islamic laws, regulations, rulings, and legal decisions are tailored to conditions and challenges other than those that are relevant to the age in which we live. In other words, despite what the Islamic heritage embodies by way of lofty principles and values of direct relevance to the realities that obtained in the days in which their original applications were derived, many of the applications and legal opinions based on such principles are linked to a historical reality that no longer exists. As a result, they belong to an era that is past, and not to the reality being lived by the Muslim community today.

It is vital that the unchanging principles and values of the Islamic worldview be recognized and preserved, because the Muslim community is in greater need of them today than it ever has been. The ways in which the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs applied the Qur’anic vision and its underlying principles to the circumstances they faced constitute a treasure trove of wisdom and understanding for us, who stand in dire need of the guidance they have to offer us in our own day and age. By allowing ourselves to benefit from this undying wisdom, we generate new dynamism within the sphere of Islamic thought, and are better able to perceive what concrete steps are called for in order to respond appropriately to the needs of the Muslim community as it seeks to nurture healthy, sound relationships among its members and to build the effective institutions needed in order to face the challenges of contemporary life.

As for the link between modern Western social sciences and the Islamization of knowledge – a link that lies at the heart of the Islamic social sciences – it has to do with both content and method. However, if we deal separately with content and method, we will get a clearer picture of things and be able to deal with them more easily and

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 fruitfully. Before embarking on this discussion, it will be important to clarify the function of the social sciences in the field of knowledge and social relationships.

In order to ascertain the function of the social sciences, we will need to be aware as a matter of principle that the social role and function of the social sciences differ from those of law, jurisprudence, and legal rulings and decisions. The function of the social sciences is essentially that of studying society in light of its cultural vision, be it spiritual or material, within the parameters of its human and material potentials and the cultural challenges of the time period defined by the study. In short, the function of the social sciences in any society is to generate social change and stability in the various areas of life – the political, the economic, and social – and on the individual, institutional, and communal levels alike.

In an Islamic society in particular, the social sciences provide the ideational content from which law and juristic research derive the rules and regulations that order relations among the society’s members and its institutional structures. In other words, the function of jurisprudence and the law is, first and foremost, formal in nature, while the function of the social sciences is primarily intellectual or ideational. As a result, they complement one another by working together to promote the progress of the Muslim community and its civilization.

The question that now arises is: what is the link between contemporary Western social sciences and the issue of the Islamization of knowledge and the development of the Islamic social sciences? In this connection, it is important to draw a distinction between Western thought generated by sociological research and study, and the methodology employed in the Western social sciences. Based on such a distinction, we see that the development of the Islamic social sciences is not opposed to past tradition. On the contrary, such development can draw on the experience, expertise, and achievements of the past, while at the same time drawing on the methodology and achievements of the Western social sciences.

The ideational content of the Western social sciences is influenced by two factors. The first factor is the subjective, ideological element that manifests itself in the Western worldview, which is essentially a

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materialistic ideological perspective. Hence, religion no longer plays any appreciable part in the vision, dealings, or social relations of Western peoples, many of whose members look upon themselves as agnostics. As for the second factor, it is the objective element represented by the research methods employed in the Western social sciences, whose object of study is human nature and its manifestations, including the ways in which people interact with their environment and the ways in which their psychological energies and human propensities can be put to use toward the fulfillment of this vision and its associated aims.

The objective aspect of the ideational content of the Western social sciences – which has yielded numerous creative tools, systems, and institutions – can be drawn upon and benefited from in the development of the Islamic social sciences. At this point, someone might ask: by benefiting from the notion of studying human nature and the laws that govern individual and communal behavior, including the material influences that operate on human beings, have we become dependent on the West, and are we ‘importing’ something foreign to our Islamic worldview?

This question can be answered unequivocally in the negative. For Islam came in order to renew the human civilizations that existed at the time of its appearance – some of which, like the Persian empire, were civilizations that had served their purpose and grown aged, weak, unproductive, and corrupt, and others of which, like ancient Greek civilization, had gone bankrupt and come to a complete end. With Islam, there dawned a new era that opened up the horizons of a global, scientific manner of relating to the universe, and which promoted knowledge, wisdom, prudence, learning, creative thought, research, and investigation. Islamic civilization inaugurated an era of scientific research and the study of the laws and patterns of the universe at a time when the then – West of the dark ages knew nothing of such things. Rather, the West acquired such disciplines from schools and universities established by Muslims, from its contact with the Muslim community, and from the translations of Muslim scholars’ writings into European languages.

The Western social sciences with their associated research into

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human nature and its social expressions are simply an extension of the study of the laws and patterns of the cosmos on the material level. They have helped to generate social thought, which has served as the basis for the development of institutions of various kinds, as well as the legal thought needed to manage Western societies’ affairs in keeping with their materialist understanding of themselves and the cosmos. How-ever, the world continues to suffer the ill effects of such a materialist view of human nature and the cosmos due to its dualistic values and standards, which have led to the woes of colonialism, injustice, war, and destruction.

Of all the peoples on earth, Muslims would have been the best qualified to lead the way in the scientific study of human nature and the divinely established laws and patterns of the created world. However, the errors into which the Muslim community fell early in its history have had long-lasting effects, thereby impeding its progress and depriving humanity for long centuries of the guidance offered by Islam and the divine revelation.

What we can conclude from the foregoing is that Muslim students and researchers need to do the following four things: (1) free them-selves from the habit of imitation and mental subordination, arming themselves with a creative, comprehensive, critical, scientific, and analytical way of thinking; (2) develop a good understanding of the Qur’anic perspective on human beings and the world around them, with its unchanging values and principles; (3) equip themselves with a thorough knowledge of the scientific method of studying human nature and the laws and patterns of the material universe, as well as human societies and their potentials and strengths within the context of their particular temporal and geographic contexts; and (4) benefit from both the Islamic heritage and the scientific achievements of modern Western society so that, with a knowledge of these, they can explore the horizons of human potential and the universe, and create the means to enable human beings to make genuine improvements in the world around them and to achieve ‘the good life’ in both this world and the next.

It should be noted in this connection that the IIIT has taken a number of significant steps in the area of academic research, which

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offer a model for scholars in the area of Islamic studies, social studies, and methodological studies, as well a model for academic research centers and universities. By studying, emulating, and developing this model, we may help to shift the focus of current efforts from mere outward forms and rhetorical one-upmanship to the service of what genuinely matters – namely, the Islamic worldview with its unchanging values and concepts.

There is a need for the publication of reference works in the area of Islamic methodology and its academic sources, and for training programs for academicians and thinkers in this field. As an important initial step toward the formation of a sound contemporary Muslim perspective and mature Muslim intellectuals and academics, Islamic universities can establish a double major consisting of simultaneous specializations in Islamic studies and sociology. This step has in fact been taken by the IIIT in the Islamic and Social Studies Program at the International Islamic University, Malaysia (IIUM), where it has proved a notable success worthy of replication and development.

The IIIT intends over the coming years to expend greater effort in the area of writing and academic training in the methodology of the Islamic social sciences. In this manner, it hopes to highlight issues pertinent to the Islamic vision generally and, more specifically, to the values and principles at the heart of this vision as they apply to real-life situations and challenges. It is hoped that support for these efforts will be forthcoming from thinkers, reformers, and academicians, as well as from institutions of higher education and academic research centers.

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