The great task facing Muslim intellectuals and leaders is to recast the whole legacy of human knowledge from the standpoint of Islam. The vision of Islam would not be a vision unless it is a vision of something, namely, life, reality, and the world. That vision is the object of study of various disciplines. To recast knowledge as Islam relates to it, is to Islamize it, i.e., to redefine and reorder the parameters and the data, to rethink the reasoning and interrelationships of the data, to reevaluate the conclusions, to re-project the goals, and to do so in such a way as to make the reconstituted disciplines enrich the vision and the serve the cause of Islam.

To this end, the methodological categories or methodologically-relevant principles of Islam, namely, the unity of truth, the unity of knowledge, the unity of humanity, the unity of life, the telic [ed., purposeful] character of creation, and the subservience of creation to man and of man to Allah (SWT), must replace the Western categories and determine the perception and ordering of reality. So too, the values of Islam should replace Western values and direct the learning activity in every field. These values, especially the usefulness of knowledge for man’s felicity, the blossoming of man’s faculties, and the remolding of creation so as to concretize the divine patterns, should be manifested in the building of culture and civilization and in human models of knowledge and wisdom, heroism and virtue, and pietism and saintliness.

While avoiding the pitfalls and shortcomings of traditional methodology, Islamization of knowledge ought to observe a number of principles that constitute the essence of Islam. To recast disciplines or categories of knowledge, both in scope and internal coherence, under the framework of Islam means subjection of their theory and method, and their principles and goals, to the Oneness of Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala) and to four derivative unities.

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Islam in the Modern National State by Erwin I. J. Rosenthal.
Cambridge: The University Press, 1965. pp. 416. $10.50
Review by Isma’il Raji al-Faruqi

The problem of the relationship of Islam to the national state and the confrontation of its Law with modernity have been the subject of much controversy. Many books have appeared which seek to define the problems and evaluate tha solutions possible or proposed. This work is perhaps one of the most comprehensive. It surveys classical political thought in Islam as well as its gradual dislodgement from the centers of Muslim political power; it ana]yzes constitutional theories, contemporary reforms and the role of education in a number of Muslim states. The amount of information Dr. Rosenthal collected is quite impressive; and, where it is purely repetitive, the book undoubtedly takes its place among the best in the field.

The book jacket announces that the author “writes always as a detached observer. He does not apply the categories of the West to what is essentially Muslim dilemma and problems.” This notwithstanding, it asserts “There has been no counterpart in Islam of the Reformation in the West and so [sic!], in the absence of radical reform, a vulnerable religious and political system has capitulated stop by step to a secular nationalism.” In Chapter I, entitled “The Hum Situation”, where the author analyzes the nature of the problem, he writes: “From Descartes on, philosophy and science th the West have been based on a new attitude toward God and the Universe…Nor must we forget the…prlnciple of freedom of conscience which was first established in the realm of religion by Luther and his Reformation. This new spirit…produced the political philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, which in turn..triggered off the French Revolution…directed equally against political and ecclesiastical tyranny. There evolved a new concept of state and nation which…can easily be reconciled with deism, but not so easily with the God of revelation, the creator and ruler of the wilverse. Hence [sic!] Muslims must either choose between the sovereignty of God and the sovereignty of the people…” (p. 6). It is nothing short of amazing how — even when he expressly plans and commits himself to be objective, whén try as he may — the Western Islamicist is incapable of putting his own cultural predilections and prejudices in enoche. That Islam did not have “the Reformation”, “Descartes”, “Locke”, “Luther” and “the French Revolution” is neither a critique, nor a description, nor an understanding of Islam but a shallow piece of Westernism. One does not understand America by saying of it that it did not have a Genghis Khan!

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I. The Marvel of the Spread of Islam

Nobody who observed the spread of Islam in the non-Muslim World, especially in the West, and still more especially in America, the United Kingdom and Western Europe during the last thirty years, can fail to wonder at the marvel, or to discern the hand of the Almighty (may He be Glorified and Exalted) at work, The configuration of so many diverse forces, arising in such disparate corners of the earth, determined by such varied chains of historical conditions, all focusing upon the aforesaid Western countries is too much for any kind of planning except the divine. The causes of Muslim immigration up to that time are themselves the result of a tremendously complex development within the Muslim World. But, had these causes been restricted to the Muslim World, the Muslims seeking to immigrate world never have arrived in the West. They were inextricably interwoven with the relations those Muslims had with the West (colonialism, studentship and training, tourism, visits to relatives, fortune-seeking) , as well as dependent upon the West’s rise as industrial and political world leader, relating itself to the Muslim world in a variety of ways.

On the other hand, the causes of the conversion of native Westerners to Islam have to do with the whole intellectual and spiritual development of the West, a development which in the last three or four decades seems to have prepared large segments of the population to be receptive to the Islamic message. The erosion of religious feeling, whether Christian or Jewish, the rise of the sciences of nature and technology under the aegis of a philosophy defiant of God and of everything supernatural; and the nihilism to which industry, urbanism and the whole structure of modern life had led all these seem like the unfolding of real salvation plans for a Heilsgeschichte aimed at the West. Another “fullness of time” seems to be in full bloom before our eyes, awaiting only the disposition of Islam to bring it to fulfillment. That is exactly the sort of grand design which only the divine Designer can bring about.

Two main forces are jointly responsible for this marvelous spread of Islam in the West: the spiritual bankruptcy of the west and Muslim hijrah or emigration.

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