EDITORIAL 

Our first paper, by Abdul Khaliq, discusses the Islamic view of faith and 
morality. The author shows how one’s faith in God, from the Qur’anic per- 
spective, is a commitment, as it implies both a whole metaphysics and an 
entire philosophy of life. In our personal lives, we need a healthy metaphysics 
for our moral behavior. Similarly, the sciences also need a metaphysical 
outlook, for this will provide significant pointers as to the direction in which 
scientific progress should advance. Abdul Khaliq further argues for a close 
relationship between the physical sciences and metaphysics. He 8ssures us 
that this intimacy will not jeopardize the positive sciences’ autonomy and 
their freedom of inquiry. His paper ends with the assertions that the cause of 
moral degeneration is to be sought in the loss of digious faith and that a 
rejuvenation of religious faith can automatically reinstate morality. 

The Department of History of Science at the University of Oklahoma, 
Norman, OK, organized a conference on “Tradition, Transmission, Transfor- 
mation: An Ancient Mechanics in Islamic and Occidental Culture,” held on 
6-7 March 1992. It was here that J. L. Berggren made an outstanding 
presentation entitled “Islamic Acquisition of the Foreign Sciences: A Cultural 
Perspective.“ We are publishing a revised version of this paper here. Berggren 
illustrates how cultural factots may have affected the Islamic world’s 
reception and acquisition of foreign sciences. The process of Islamizing the 
mathematical sciences inherited from the classical Greeks is instructive, for 
by studying it we realize that Muslim scientists were tesponding to the needs, 
concerns, and criticisms of a civilization profoundly different from that of 
classical Greece. Berggren shows how Islamic mathematics was not just good 
Greek mathematics done by people who happened to write in Arabic. He also 
suggests that it is important for us to understand the terms on which Islamic 
culture of that time approached classical Greek culture. In fact, to spell out 
these terms of Islamization is even more crucial for us today, as we seek to 
facilitate the adoption of modern sciences into an Islamic worldview. 

In his keynote address to the International Seminar on Malik Bennabi, 
Anwar Ibmhim complained that “it is an indictment of our parochialism that 
Bennabi has been neglected because he wrote in French. It is an even greater 
indictment that he is neglected because he was an individual thinker and not 
the idealogue of a movement. Neither is sufficient teason for original thought 
to be marginalized.” We need to correct this situation and make an extra ef- 
fort to ensure that Bennabi’s id- a accessible to researchers and also to 
encourage more translations, discussions, and writings of this very impottant 



vi The American Journal of Jslamic Social Sciences 9:3 

Muslim thinker. We have reproduced the entire text of Anwar Ibrahim’s key- 
note address in this issue. In fact, we published a full report of this interna- 
tional seminar in our MISS 8:3 (December 1991, pp. 563-67). 

In addition, this issue features a paper by Fawzia Bariun that summarizes 
Bennabi’s ideas on the intellectual problems of the Muslim ummah. The 
author did her Ph.D., at the UniveFsity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, on Ben- 
nabi’s ideas. Her paper was pmented during the International Seminar on 
Malik Bennabi. We hope that its ptoceedings will soon be available. 

Louay Safi traces the origin and development of the umcept of national- 
ism. He undescom its defects and points out some of its devastating conse- 
quences, especially in regions abounding in ethnic and religious minorities. 
Safi demonstrates how the political structures which existed in the Muslim 
world before Western colonialism were superior in many ways to those of the 
West, despite their rudimentary and distorted forms. He refers to the model 
of communal pluralism, the millet system, that flourished under the khz%fuh. 
Here, confessional communities were regarded as autonomous social Units 
enjoying both administmtive and legal independence. Nationalism, on the 
other hand, rejects the coexistence of autonomous or semiautonomous ethnic 
groups within the state. It also encowages national leaders to devise policies 
aimed at assimilating minorities, ethnic or confessional, in order to achieve 
national integration. In other words, minorities are seen as being incompatible 
with a given society’s mainstream and therefore must either give up their eth- 
nic identity or become an outcast and undesirable social group. 

Ironically, Safi’s paper comes at a time when we are watching the “ethnic 
cleansing” of Bosnian Muslims by their Serb neighbors. This clearly shows 
the extent to which powerful majorities can go in eliminating ethnic diversity. 
Such behavior provides a glaring contrast to the millet system, under which 
the Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians flourished for centuries. 

Marie Parker-Jenkins, who did her doctoral dissertation on ”The Shifting 
Status of Teachers in the UK with Reference to the European Court of Hu- 
man Rights,” has add& the issues of making adequate provisions for 
Muslim children in British public schools as well as establishing separate 
publicly funded schools. She has provided us with a thoroughly documented 
examination of the educational needs of Muslim children now living in Bri- 
tain. The European Convention of Human Rights, says Parker-Jenkins, ~ e -  
quires the state to respect the right of parents to ensure education and teach- 
ing in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions. She 
discussed the impact of this document on Britain’s educational system in her 
dissertation. The quirements concerning parental wishes could be applicable, 
Parker-Jenkins believes, to the bmad educational needs d s i n g  out of Islamic 
teachings. Parker-Jenkins futther says that educationists will have to confront 
the problems faced by Muslim children, consult with the Muslim cornmunity, 



Editorial vii 

and attempt to devise appropriate solutions. There is a need to foster a multi- 
cultural perspective within discrete subject areas, particularly at the second- 
ary school level, and to boost the morale and identity of Muslim childten. She 
warm that if a policy is not developed that addresses areas of concern and 
provides enlightened school leadership while there is still time, the use of 
crisis-management techniques cannot be avoided. 

Jonathan Sama, a reputed historian of the Jewish community in the 
United States, has documented its struggle to achieve recognition and legiti- 
macy in American social and political institutions. He fotesees a similar pos- 
sibility for the newly emerging Muslim community in the United States and 
advises the Jewish community to welcome the Muslims’ assertiveness and to 
explore positive ways of interaction. Sarna presented an earlier version of this 
paper at a conference sponsored by the Wilstein Institute of Jewish Policy 
Studies at the University of Judaism, Los Angeles, CA, during June 1989. 
The proceedings of this confemce were published under the title of Jewish 
Identity in America by the Wilstein Institute. We ate publishing this paper 
after slight modification with the permission of the author and the publisher. 

Once again we have T&i J. al ‘Alwh- reflections on taqlid and ijtihad. 
As our regular d e r s  know, this is a continuation of a series of papers that 
appeared in recent issues of AJZSS. This time he discusses the scope of taqlid 
and spells out what role nonspecialists perform in furthering the ptocess of 
ijtihad. A lay Muslim engages the f q d z  in dialogue and then asks for the re8- 
sons for specific rulings, a practice that helps to define new situations for a 
creative application of fiqh. 

We have four book reviews and a similar number of seminats and confer- 
ence reports. As a reminder of the five-hundred-year annivetsary celebration 
of Columbus’ discovery of America, which coincided with the banning of 
Islam and the forced exodus of the Jews and the Muslims from the Iberian 
peninsula, we have a detailed research note from T. B. Inring on how the 
Muslims were brought to the New World as slaves and then divested of their 
religion, language, and culture. The sttuggle of these enslaved African Mus- 
lims for their freedom and identity mmains a rich and almost untapped field 
of study. Similarly, Hakim Rashid has outlined another a m  of research that 
needs further exploration: the secular education and the political socialization 
of Muslim childten. 

In this issue we have provided a cumulative index of the last three issues 
of this volume and will, in shd AZW, follow it with an annual cumulative 
index for the entire volume in the Winter 1992 issue. The cumulative index 
of our back issues (1985-1991) is available in the form of a booklet. 

Sayyid M. Syeed