EDITORIAL 
The first paper in our present issue is by Abdullah H. M. a1 Khalifah 

and examines how religiosity in an Islamic context serves a s  a protective 
mechanism against criminal temptation. This is done, in short, by placing 
the concept of law in the realm of religion, which means that criminal 
activity is seen as a violation of God’s law before it is seen as a violation 
of a person’s rights. Such a perspective also reinforces the awareness of 
the certainty and severity of punishment in the afterlife. The author ar- 
gues that Islam provides a unique social control perspective, one that has 
accounted for the main parameters that underlie the mechanisms of social 
control: religion, morality, and law. He first reviews the theories and 
literature concerning the religion-crime relationship and then proceeds to 
discuss the meaning of religiosity in Islam and how it has been trans- 
formed into a valuable force for crime control. He concludes his analysis 
with a discussion of the elements of Islamic ideology that constrain crimi- 
nal behavior. 

Muhammad al-Ghazali calls for a study of Sh& Wali Allah’s thought 
in greater depth, for the exceptionally futuristic thrust of his ideas are 
extremely relevant and promising for contemporary and future Islamic 
thought. He chooses to study Shah Wali Allah’s synthesis of reason, 
revelation, and empiricism, which he claims has been unrecognized by 
many earlier and contemporary scholars. Al-Ghazali shows how Shah 
Wali All& builds evidence from an inductive survey of social phe- 
nomena to substantiate the contentions of revelation while remaining 
within the doctrinal framework of revealed guidance and thus constructs 
a paradigm of universal social culture. Also covered is Shah Wali Allah’s 
analysis of what separates human beings from animals and how the 
former, due to their inherent and God-given instincts, develop civilization. 

Muhammad Hashim Kamali discusses the possibility of price control 
(tus‘fr) in Islam law. He shows that Islam did not promulgate any law 
that limits profits and fixes prices. He also examines several provisions 
concerning price control and highlights some of the conflicting interests 
of freedom vs. authority that are reflected in relevant Shari‘ah provisions. 
The underlying issue of his research is the extent to which price controls 
may or may not impinge on the basic freedom of trade and of the indi- 
vidual to sell items at the regular market price as opposed to one fixed 



by the ruling authorities. In his discussion, he demonstrates that the 
Shari‘ah’s overriding intention is to preserve the f d o m  of trade, which, 
according to him, sometimes d t s  in the implementation of a policy of 
price control. 

Florence Eid was commissioned by the Ford Foundation to write a 
report on the status of Islamic studies in North America. The report is of 
scholarly value and will be of great benefit to our readers. We are glad 
that we had the opportunity of making this academic study available 
through NZSS. 

We have fairly extensive reflections from Tihi al ‘Alwiird and Ismail 
Serageldin. A1 ‘AlwiM reflects on Muslim identity and the concept of 
nationality, whereas Serageldin picks up where the former had left off in 
earlier issues. He recognizes the need to undelstand the past and to de- 
code its language thtough contemporary eyes so that what is relevant for 
contempomy Muslims can be sifted from what is timebound and, by ex- 
tension, tempomy and meant for a specific society. 

In our ’’research notes” section, we feature a lecture on the challenges 
faced by Syria during its attempt to Ambize modem knowledge and edu- 
cation. We present this to focus our readers’ attention on the need to 
undertake a similar effort in other Muslim lands. Islamization, after all, 
involves a certain degree of Ambization in the linguistic domain. We 
hope that this lecture will encourage our scholars to pursue this topic. 

Out of three books reviewed in this issue, two come from Japan. Our 
first review is of a book, printed in the United States, that deals with a 
recently published bibliographic collection on publications dealing with 
the Islamic resurgence. Although it has some shortcomings, we feel that 
it will be a valuable research tool for both students and scholars. The 
other two books come from Japan. It is heartening to welcome objective 
study of Islam coming from the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, Inter- 
national University of Japan. Their publications display a genuine attempt 
to understand and interpret Islam on its own. 

We have reports from three conferences. Even though the National 
Seminar on Developmental Journalism was not organized by an Islamic 
agency to discuss the topic from an Islamic perspective, the majority of 
speakem, organizers, and presenters were Muslims. This report will be 
quite relevant to our readers inte-ed in developmental journalism. 

Mohammed Karabal’s comments on the clash of civilizations or the 
clash of religions is quite a timely response to Huntington’s recent article 
on “The Clash of Civilizations.” As usual, we have abstracts of recent 
dissertations on Islam and Muslims done in western universities. 

There is some reorganization taking place at the two sponsoring 
institutions of MISS: the Intemational Institute of Islamic Thought and 
the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. We hope that this will not 
delay the next issue of the journal. 

Sayyid M. Syeed