Study in Islamic Science and Polity

STUDY IN ISLAMIC SCIENCE AND POLITY – Book Sample

Preface – STUDY IN ISLAMIC SCIENCE AND POLITY

 The Muslim world. Armed conflict, intellectual and political on, have left the mark of bondage on these peoples. Yet like ix they have risen up from the ashes of their temporary set are those who have yielded to Taqlid or blind following of by imitating the cultural pluralism of the latter and using it kind of Islamic meaning.

This intellectual oddity marks a of the age of the rationalists that started about a century death of the Prophet Muhammad. it was an age of temporary regarding the true understanding of the Islamic world view in the life and thought of the Ummah, the conscious world Islam. it saw the rise of Hellenic cultural integration in the work of Muslim thought. Rationalist philosophers such as lbn Rushd, Al-Farabi, the Ikhwan as-Safa, to an extent Ibn and others, excelled in rationalist inquiry, borrowing from ditions and adapting Qur’anic knowledge to these rationalists on slaught of Taqlid was so widespread that imam Ghazzali he speculative pursuits of Muslim mathematicians of the time, d to use mathematics as a tool for abstruse conceptualisations nd creation.

Thus, the true Islamic foundations of knowledge of thought cannot be rooted in the rationalist legacy. we are witnessing a new and even more harmful Taqlid by the Muslim intelligentsia. it is a more dangerous develop the early one, because the gap between the West and Islam ed since the Muslim countries became subject to Western bondage. However, true devotees of the Qur’an and authen­ h are endeavouring, against many odds, to promote the Is­ rld view.

Manifestation of this world view is seen through the legacy of sation that was presented to humanity through the Prophet ad’s mystic flight into the realm of perfect knowledge, called tul Muntaha. lts essence, not sheer form, was embodied in nah Charter. This epistemology has always been at the root Islamic world view, contrary to all other cultural paradigms, here some similarity arises because the divine message across reality and is universal in all.

The goal to which the truly devoted exponents of the Qur’an ah must today raise the banner for establishing that world ich was blessed upon the Prophet Muhammad. Through his and subsequently, through Shari’ah (Islamic Law), has been d the permanent mark of mercy and truth. It is a realisation n all spheres of life and thought, with the Shari’ah in its development through Ahkams (rules of life and thought), ground­ atura! and social sciences, politics and institutions, money, development and international affairs, and so on.

all way this book aims to nourish that rising Islamic spirit, Taqlid and directed at understanding and applying the Qur’anic atic roots of the Islamic world view to life and thought. The spirit manifested through the Shuratic process as an embry­ pervasive process of investigation in all systems of life and y means of the divine law, invokes a progressive understand­ Qur’an and Sunnah. This is also the process of Ahkam for­

t opens ali categories of knowledge seeking – except the premises of the Qur’an and Sunnah – to critical investiga­ ptance, rejection or revision. The process of change in Is­ ory is thus to be studied by critical investigation in this light, the premises of the Qur’anic Ahkam. Such rules (Ahkam) be defended by the authentic Sunnah (Prophetic traditions) rming the permanence of Shari’ah in all disciplines of thought. eational Islamic movement, as long as it upholds this true the Qur’anic world view supported by the authentic Sunnah, atest mercy and light in this confused age of modernist para­ ese movements are thus to fortify the arguments in terms of nic intellectual, scientific, economic, socio-political and or­ al capabilities toward realising the true spirit of Ummah. ent cooperation, markets, politics and institutions, internaations and globalisation of the Ummah must be taken up in anic perspective. This is the only way towards a true Islamic for Muslims to live self-reliantly; and for humanity to uphold the way the Prophet has taught us. There is no other way!