Book Reviews

Epistemological Integration:
Essentials of an Islamic Methodology

Fathi Hasan Malkawi
London and Washington: IIIT, 2014. pbk. 342 pages.

Nancy Roberts’ translation of Fathi Malkawi’s most recent study represents
the latest addition to the corpus of literature dealing with the Islamization of
Knowledge project. The author’s core argument is that a truly Islamic ap-
proach to the study of any phenomenon, whether biological, physical, or so-
cial, is definitively characterized by its inherent ability to incorporate both the
advances made in scientific theory as well as those made in applied science
by any person. However, there is one caveat: these advances cannot be
founded upon any underlying principles that contradict the only sources of
knowledge available to humanity: divine revelation and physical, psycholog-
ical, and social reality. This book, which falls squarely within the branches of
epistemology that deal with education theory and knowledge assessment,
strives to go beyond mere academic discussion into practical application for
all major fields of scientific inquiry. It is primarily addressed to Muslim sci-
entists and educators, regardless of discipline, who seek a coherent set of prin-
ciples and a clearly delineated foundational worldview, inspired by the Qur’an
and Sunnah, from which to ignite intellectual and material progress within
contemporary Muslim society.

One of the work’s most salient features is its focus on training via exercises,
activities, and problems to be dealt with in training seminars. The appendix
provides clear instructions on organizing such events in order to teach the
methodology of epistemological integration as explained by Malkawi. One
also finds charts and diagrams that present the relationships between the sources
of knowledge and the means of interpreting this knowledge, as well as the con-
nections among epistemology, methodology, and worldview interspersed
throughout the text and then presented again at the end for convenience. 

The first chapter, “Concepts of Relevance to Epistemological Integration,”
presents the concept of tawḥīd, God’s singular uniqueness as defined in the



Qur’an, hadith, and scholastic theological treatises on monotheism, as the core
principle underlying any Islamic methodological approach. In this examination
of how Islam’s core message influences a Muslim’s worldview, the ideas of
Ismail al-Faruqi (d. 1986) dominate. Here, as well as throughout the remaining
chapters and to the reader’s great benefit, one finds clearly laid out the main
ideas of such important contemporary Muslim philosophers and legal minds
as the Moroccan philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman and legal theorist Ahmad
al-Raysuni, the Iraqi jurist Taha Jabir al-Alwani, and the Saudi scholar Abdul-
Hamid AbuSulayman. Also included among the innovative thinkers whose
ideas are to be integrated within an Islamic theory of knowledge are non-Mus-
lim philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn (d. 1996). Pre-modern thinkers
whose work provides Malkawi’s Islamic methodology with the springboard
upon which to launch itself include Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1040), Ibn Hazm (d.
1064), Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), Ibn Taymiyyah
(d. 1328), Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi (d. 1388), and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406).

Chapter 2, “Method and Mehodology,” seeks to clearly define these two
terms that correspond to the Arabic minhāj/manhaj, as found in the Qur’an,
and manhajīyah. According to Malkawi, while the former refers to “research
procedures,” the latter denotes “the science that concerns itself with these pro-
cedures” (p. 46). It is this second term, its denotations as well as connotations,
that should command the attention of those readers interested in theories of
knowledge, for it exemplifies the most significant subject of debate in Islamic
intellectual history. Malkawi points out that the concept of methodology most
closely resembles that which has been historically labeled the “science of logic”
(p. 47). Shafi‘i’s “principles of jurisprudence” (uṣūl al-fiqh) and al-Ghazali’s
“scientific standard” (mi‘yār al-‘ilm) or “investigative criterion” (mi‘yār al-
naẓar) all refer to the same core concept, but from within discipline-specific
discussions. 

This is easily relatable to another very important work that has yet to re-
ceive the attention in English-language scholarship that it deserves: the late
Egyptian cultural critic Mahmud Muhammad Shakir’s (d. 1997) Abātīl wa
Asmār (Lies and Idle Chatter, 1972). Shakir presents a four-part division of
the meaning of dīn, commonly translated in English as “religion,” that has
strong parallels with the four types of Islamic universals developed by Ahmad
al-Raysuni and thoroughly discussed by Malkawi in this chapter. Raysuni’s
first universal relates to doctrine, the second to the higher aims and intents of
Islamic law, the third to morality, and the fourth to legislation (p. 67). The uni-
versals of doctrine, morality, and legislation correspond respectively to
Shakir’s i‘tiqādāt wa ‘ibādāt (creedal beliefs and acts of worhsip), adāb wa
akhlāq (virtues and ethics), and shar‘ (the body of laws). 

96 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 32:1



Interestingly, paralleling Raysuni’s universal of maqāṣid (the higher in-
tents or goals of the law) we find Shakir’s istinbāṭ, which broadly means a
method of investigating a problem. Shakir states that this aspect of dīn has of-
fered the greatest challenge to earlier thinkers by causing the historical rivalry
between the ahl al-ẓāhir/ahl al-ḥadīth (textualists) and the ahl al-ra’y (spec-
ulative rationalists). I would argue, as Shakir did, that it remains the issue of
the day and is the very same one that Malkawi and others are grappling with
in terms of the Islamization of Knowledge. It is inherently linked with the
maqāṣidī discourse as developed by al-Shatibi in Andalusia, al-Tahir ibn Ashur
(d. 1973) in Tunisia, and the Moroccan Allal al-Fasi (d. 1974), and that con-
tinues to be developed today by scholars like Ahmad al-Raysuni, Jasser Auda,
Mohammad Hashim Kamali, and Taha Jabir al-Alwani. 

In chapter 3, “Methodological Awareness and Methodological Defects,”
Malkawi cites AbuSulayman’s three conditions for renewal and reform: men-
tal strength and courage, sound thinking, and “a clear worldview whose aim
is to bring benefit to all” (p. 98). One of the points to take away from this final
condition is that an Islamic approach to scientific thought must be character-
ized by its humanism and not by religious chauvinism. Al-Alwani’s theory of
the dual readings of the Qur’an and the created universe are then cited as the
means by which these three conditions can be met. Malkawi argues that so
long as the analyst emphasizes the “historical logic of change” (p. 99), today’s
reformers can avoid repeating the tired old debates that inspired Ibn Rushd’s
seminal work on the harmony between rational philosophy and revelation, his
responses to the Ghazalian critique, Ibn al-Salah’s reactionary declaration that
logic was religiously prohibited, and Ibn Taymiyyah’s innovative development
of an Islamic alternative to the Aristotelian syllogism.

I would add that a fuller view of the historical development of Islamic
legal reasoning and its dialogue with Aristotelian philosophy will show that
al-Ghazali’s critique, in actual practice and as urged on by his reading of Ibn
Hazm’s work on the subject, amounted to a reconfiguration of the jurist’s
methods of analogical reasoning in order to conform to the rigors of the cat-
egorical syllogism and a desire to yield the type of epistemological certainty
that it was thought to produce.

In chapter 4, “Evolution in the Concept of Method in Islamic and Western
Thought,” Malkawi recounts the major developments in humanity’s under-
standing of method, pointing out the many contributions of Muslim scientists
and philosophers such as Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1040) “known for his precise
and thorough formulation of the experimental scientific method based on ob-
servation, experimentation and proof,” and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) whose “em-
phasis on the importance of practical, concrete experience (empiricism) for

Book Reviews 97



acquiring an understanding of the defining characteristics of things, social
laws, and principles of causality” (pp. 144-45) predates early modern Europe’s
foregrounding of empirical research. 

In this same section, Malkawi identifies a distinction between Muslim his-
torians’ method of evaluating texts of the Prophetic Sunnah and the historical
critical method of Orientalists “with the Islamic method being founded upon
religious faith, and the Western method being based on a secular, materialist
critique of history” (p. 145). However, there is another way of looking at the
differences between the two from a perspective squarely grounded in episte-
mology. The issue at hand has to do with the philosophical problems of testi-
mony and its role as a means to acquire belief at a high level of probability and
the production of certainty in knowledge. The distinction between the Islamic
method of hadith verification and the historical critical method can be explained
as more than just a matter of religious faith; it also has a great deal to do with
early modern Europe’s adaptation of the empirical model of Ibn al-Haytham
and Ibn Khaldun. The historical sociological work of Steven Shapin, particu-
larly his A Social History of Truth (1994), would be very useful in further teas-
ing out these philosophical and methodological differences. 

Chapter 5, “Schools of Islamic Methodology,” introduces four equally
valid schools in that they adhere to the tawḥīdī (unifying) methodology as ex-
plained by Malkawi: the rationalist-scholastic-philosophical school, the expe-
riential-Sufi school, the scientific-empirical school, and the juristic-uṣūlī school.
These schools are defined by the nature of the knowledge they seek and the
tools they use. From the first school, which Malkawi presents Ibn Taymiyya,
Ibn Rushd, and Ibn Ḥazm (p. 155) as having advanced the most balanced ap-
proach to reason and revelation. It is noteworthy that all three could equally be
placed in the fourth school, that of the jurists, and even in the empirical school.
This is particularly true of Ibn Hazm, whom Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) men-
tioned in his Reconstruction of Religious Thought as a pioneer in this regard.
Among the leading thinkers of the juridical school, Malkawi highlights al-‘Izz
ibn ‘Abd al-Salam (d. 1261), Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi, and Muhammad al-
Shawkani (d. 1839) for advances made in legal theory with respect to the pri-
macy of public welfare and independent legal reasoning (pp. 172-73). It should
be noted that each of them was heavily indebted to the three philosophers men-
tioned above, as is readily apparent to anyone who has studied their works.

Chapter 6, “Sources and Tools of Methodology,” emphasizes the relations
between the two sources of knowledge (revelation and the created world) and
the two primary tools for acquiring knowledge (human reason and the senses).
Malkawi presents an interesting discussion of principles and patterns of conduct
or practice in research (p. 203). The reader of this section would benefit from

98 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 32:1



examining these ideas in tandem with a reading of Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion
of conduct in The Science of Science and Reflexivity (Polity Press: 2004).

Chapter 7, “Methodological Principles and Values,” presents the three
primary goals of Islam as developed by Taha Jabir al-Alwani: tawḥīd (unity),
tazkiyah (purity), and ‘umrān (civility). Malkawi identifies Ibn Khaldun as
the founder of “‘ilm al-ʿumrān: ‘the science of human development and pros-
perity,’ ‘the science of civilization’ or what we now know as sociology” (p.
266). Khaldunian sociology is only starting to receive the attention it deserves,
with the most recent example of such attention being the publication of Syed
Farid Alatas’ Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in So-
ciology (Routledge: 2014) as part of the Routledge Advances in Sociology
series. Malkawi considers Ibn Khaldun’s science as the key discipline for those
“present-day advocates of reform and change in Muslims societies to study
the laws that govern change... the knowledge it might yield of natural laws
and patterns would then form the basis for reform efforts” (p. 269).

This book is useful for scholars of epistemology and education as well as
for those interested in curriculum design and the construction of foundational
principles of thought based upon one’s religious identity. I must highlight one
of the author’s final points in his “Concluding Remarks”: a “preoccupation
with reviving the Islamic heritage by, for example, editing, annotating and
abridging manuscripts for publication… is not a substitute for the establishment
of new disciplines derived from the texts of the Qur’an and the Sunnah” (p.
278). This is most certainly true in the case of the Arab, South Asian, and Turk-
ish Muslim communities, for the bulk of the last century was dedicated to just
such an enterprise. However, this may not equally apply to the burgeoning
American and western Muslim intellectual community, many of whom do not
have access to these texts in the original languages.

Jibreel Delgado
Graduate Student, School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies 

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Book Reviews 99