EDITORIAL 

With this fourth issue of 1993, we have completed ten years of pub- 
lishing the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (MISS). We 
started our journey in 1984 with two issues published during the year 
under the title of American Journal of Islamic Studies. The next year it 
was transformed into the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 
(AJISS). The first decade has been quite a pioneering experience, and by 
now we have been able to identify a growing pool of thinkers, writers, 
and social scientists who are participating in our endeavor to promote a 
scholarly forum on Islam. 

In this issue, Rosalind W. Gwynne's paper is part of a continuing dis- 
cussion on sunnah. She demonstrates that, in Islamic texts, sunnah does 
not refer only to the Sunnah of the Prophet, of the local community, or 
of the Companions and the early community; it can refer to the "Sunnat 
All&" (the practice of God). She reviews the occurrence of the word 
sunnah in the Qur'an and, by analyzing some tafair and early docu- 
ments, shows that it also refers to the universal and unchanghg rules that 
Allah has established and set into motion. She quotes Wensinck's Con- 
cordance of Hadith, in which sunnah has been used in the context of 
"Sunnat Alliih alongside with "Sunnat a1 Nabi" and sunnah in other 
senses. Social scientists must concentrate on the "Sunnat A l l W  in order 
to understand the universal laws of Allah that govern social phenomena. 

Louay Safi provides a methodological approach that recognizes reve- 
lation as a primary source of knowledge and seeks to use both text and 
action analysis techniques as necessary theory-building tools. He argues 
that scientific activity presupposes metaphysical knowledge and that, fur- 
thermore, it is even impossible without transcendental ptesuppositions. He 
also contends that revelation's truth is rooted in empirical reality and that 
the quality of evidence supporting revealed truth is of no less caliber than 
that justifying empirical truth. 

Ebtihaj Al-A'ali presented her paper on "Assumptions Concerning the 
Social Sciences: A Comparative Perspective" at a recent Toronto, Canada, 
confemce dealing with cross-cultural knowledge. She summarizes briefly 



vi The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 104 

the assumptions of modem social sciences concerning human existence 
and society, analyzes the impact of these assumptions on organizational 
theory, and then proceeds to explore the assumptions of Islam concerning 
these same areas. Al-A‘ali, whose Ph.D. (University of Lancaster, UK) 
was a case study analysis of the phenomenon of women in management 
in Bahrain, dmws from her Tesearch to show the impact of imported 
values and beliefs on organizations in Bahrain as they become larger and 
mom complicated. 

M. Ramzan Akhtar explains the ptocess of economic growth in an Is- 
lamic economy. After taking into consideration all relevant physical and 
moral factors responsible for growth, he argues that the growth prospects 
of present-day Muslim countries are not limited by the amount of avail- 
able physical factors, for it is his contention that moral factors should be 
recognized and exploited in growth strategies. Akhtar shows that the role 
of moral factors in terms of fudZ AZlcsh (bounties of Allah) influences eco- 
nomic growth through both autonomous and induced channels that, in 
turn, operate through institutional factors and at the level of tuqwci in an 
Islamic society. In this paper, he restricts his discussion to the role of the 
mosque and the Islamic state. 

Ali A. Mazrui treats us to his inspiring and thought-provoking re- 
sponse to Fukuyama’s “The End of History” proposal. He discusses Fuku- 
yama’s thesis in relation to the Muslim world: the fact that Prophet 
Muhammad is the final prophet means that he declared the end of reli- 
gious history, since he represented the final conclusion of that particular 
phase of human history. Even in a secular sense, the world of Islam is 
larger in population and growing faster than its non-Muslim counterparts. 
Mazrui says that Islam, in the twentieth century, has offered the greatest 
cultural resistance to western imperialism and secularism, though not ne- 
cessarily to western democracy and capitalism. He cites such reformist 
thinkers as J a d  a1 Din a1 AfghW, Mubammad ‘Abduh, and Mubam- 
mad IqbEl, all of whom were engaged in the reconstruction of Islamic 
thought. 

He then shows how the sixteenth-century Protestant reformation was 
initiated by the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. Martin Luther and 
John Calvin, the major movers of change, challenged priestly intercession 
and thus promoted Protestant ethics as a precursor of capitalism. The 
French Revolution had similar anticlerical overtones. M a d  shows how 
the Prophet had asserted, seven hundted years before Luther and Calvin, 
that the message of Jesus had been distorted by some of his followers. He 
then asks if Islam was the first Protestant revolution that sought reforma- 
tion without undermining the role of Christ. 



Editorial vii 

Muslims have influenced the history of Europe by fighting for their 
freedom from European imperialism. The Algerian struggle changed the 
history of France, and the Afghan struggle for freedom ended the history 
of communism in the former Soviet Union. M d  concludes that Mus- 
lims are shaping global history, but only unintentionally and with un- 
intended consequences. He would like to see M d i m s  assume the role of 
makers of history, take charge of their destiny, and help transform the rest 
of humanity. 

Under our section for research notes, we have published Afaf Al- 
Dabbagh’s research proposal. As this issue was going to press, we were 
informed that this project had been completed successfully. 

We have four book reviews dealing with postmodernism and Islam, 
ummatic identity, Islamic penal law, and women in Islam. Our con- 
ferences and addresses section is quite rich with several addresses and re- 
ports from the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a seminar on Islamic 
economics, and the Princeton conference on Islamic law. The longest 
address is by Charles, Prince of Wales, and was delivered at the Oxford 
Centre for Islamic Studies. His thoughts on Islam and the West provide 
a frank perspective on the need for mutual appreciation and accommoda- 
tion at a time when the cost of conflict and confmtation is becoming 
unbearable. 

Some time ago, we published an index of the first seven volumes in 
1991. Znshd’ A k i h ,  we should have the cumulative index of the fitst ten 
years available in the beginning of 1994. Due to increased demand for 
our back issues, all of them have been reprinted and are now available. 

Sayyid M. Syeed