188 The American Journal of lslamic Social Sciences 20:3 & 4 

Decolonizing Methodologies: 

Research and Indigenous Peoples 

Linda Tuhiwai Smith 

London, UK: Zed Books Ltd/University of 

Otago Press, 1999. 208 pages. 

Decolonizing Methodologies, by Maori educationist Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 
challenges the dominant western "frameworks of knowledge." Many of 
the concerns voiced in this book are shared by Muslims, who also have 
been colonized both physically and intellectually. Thus, there is something 
for Muslim scholars to learn in the attempts of others to address western 
disciplines of knowledge. 







Book Reviews 191 

possibility of an "interface" between this approach and such social sci­
ence approaches as sociology and policy analysis. 

This book is very relevant as far as the Islamic and Muslim responses to 
contemporary knowledge are concerned. The whole "Islamization ofknowl­
edge" OOK) idea, propounded by scholars since the 1970s, is focused on the 
process of developing alternatives to western knowledge by using both our 
heritage and modern science - but from our own perspectives - and utiliz­
ing methodologies that are consistent with our epistemological foundations 
centering on revelation. The issues brought up by Smith for indigenous peer 
pies are generally issues of concern to Muslim scholars as well. 

The progress and shortcomings of the IOK agenda manifest the diffi­
culties involved in creating and developing indigenous Islamic alterna­
tives. Islamic alternatives are necessarily transethnic, transnational, 
transtribal, and transcultural, having at their core an essential worldview. 
However, this worldview is able to include the Muslim world's pluralist 
nature and deal with non-Muslim research and researchers. In this, we 
have to admit that the journey has only begun. 

Mohamed Aslam Haneef 

Department of Economic s 
International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia