The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. I, 1989 

Remembering Islam: A Critique of 
Habermas and Foucault 

Eric A. Winkel 

Introduction 

13 

Jean Baudrillard suggested we "forget Foucault" because his status as 
one of the greatest thinkers of the West in this century belied his commitment 
against state power. A similar criticism may be levied against Habermas, 
whose ideal communication community merely reproduces and perpetuates 
so-called modern secular Western epistemologies. If we take seriously the 
anarchic thought of Habermas and Foucault, we conclude that the 
epistemologies created in the past few hundred years are pernicious, per­
vasive, and truth-distorting. But their vision of the possible world which would 
emerge after the death of these epistemologies is extremely restricted and 
inadequate. I suggest we "remember" Islam as the divine guidance of God 
(SWT), which provides the basis for a truly emancipatory meta-critique. The 
extension of an Islamic critique into the realm of anarchic thought gives it 
more precision and sophistication. 

Social and Natural Sciences: The Islamic Perspective [1981] 1 lays the 
foundation for an Islamic critique of Western episternologies and the rebuilding 
of the Islamic sciences by exposing the inadequacies of Western epistemologies 
and by outlining the guidelines along which Islamic epistemologies must direct 
the intellectual power of Muslim scholars. The contributors to Social and 
Natural Sciences denounce the modernized and socialized versions of Islam 
arising in this century. These versions borrowed their essence not from Islam 
but from the capitalist, neo-colonial West or from the Marxist-Leninist East. 
I suggest we characterize the first part of this Islamic critical endeavor as 
anarchic in that it recognizes the Western epistemologies are neither benign 
nor local, but in fact carry interest-full, imperialist, dominating designs on 

Dr. Eric A. Winkel received his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina and is a Pro­
f~sor a1 the lntemational Islamic University. Selangor, Malaysia. 

1Isma·il R. al Fariiqi. Abdullah Omar Naseef, eds. Social and Natural Sciences: The 
Islamic Perspective (Hodden and Stoughton, 1981). 



14 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. I, 1989 

resources, societies, and knowledge itself. Specifically, I see three kinds of 
anarchic critique behind Social and Natural Sciences: that against the nation­
state; that against secular Western world views; and , more subtly, that against 
power politics from Mu' awiyah to his latter-day successors. By characteriz­
ing this theme of critique as anarchic. we engage the Western tradition of 
anarchic thought. The Islamic critique of Social and Natural Sciences destroys 
the claims of Western epistemologies as interest-free, objective, and com­
plete. The shortcomings of Hegel, Comte, and Talcott Parsons are weU describ­
ed. But there are thinkers in the West, namely Michel Foucault and Juergen 
Habermas, whose anarchic thought similarly refutes claims of disinterested 
truth , objectivity, and completeness. I therefore propose to extend the Islamic 
critique to two .of the greatest twentieth century thinkers in the West, Foucault 
and Habermas. 

This enterprise builds further an Islamic critique in this way. From the 
perspective of Islam, the Muslim is immediately guided to ask certain ques­
tions about theoretical claims, claims of history, and views about human nature. 
From this perspective, he or she adequately criticizes and refutes claims that 
a reduction to material data can be a complete description of reality, for ex­
ample. But from other perspectives, usually a radical perspective sensitive 
to power and domination in society. Foucault and Habermas also refute many 
claims of Western epistemologies, consequently, this enterprise extends the 
Islamic critique because it differentiates more clearly a critique which is 
Islamic from a critique which is merely radical. This enterprise also locates 
a further point from which the critique of Western society may be conducted. 
By locating a point beyond the criticism of positivism. for example, an ex­
tended Islamic critique addresses specific recent modifications of Western 
epistemologies. I see the role of the analysis of anarchic and radical thought 
of Foucault and Habermas not as one contributing to the Islamic critique, 
but, rather, as one extending its precision and sophistication. Edward W. 
Said has made great advances in understanding the episteme,2 or knowledge­
realm, which, through forms oflanguage and oppression , denies the existence 
of Palestinians. He has also carried out excellent research on Orientalism, 
the colonial, paternalistic misconceptions of Western people toward Arab and 
other Eastern peoples. This research refers explicitly and in general terms 
to Foucault and anarchic. radical thought in the West. This article co-opts 
anarchic and radical discourse for the refutation of modern man, but in tum 
rejects the same thought by accepting the resolution of Islamic epistemologies. 
In Islam, all knowledge is placed firmly in infinite God; no pseudo-source 

20ne definition of episteme is "an invisible pattern that serves as a fundamental regulatory 
mechanism for the formation of knowledge" Karlis Racevsl<ls Michel Foucault and the Subve~ion 
of lme/lect, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1983) p. 22. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habcnnas and Foucault 15 

of knowledge is accepted. Technically similar, the rejection of pseudo-sources 
of knowledge is one success of anarchic and radical discoveries in the recent 
West. But Islamic epistemology is different, even in its first stage of strip­
ping bare the false claims of sources of truth or knowledge, because the Islamic 
intellection begins with the acceptance that there is no god but God, and 
the subsequent identification and rejection of false sources of truth . After 
thjs identification and rejection, closure is again achieved, but this time at 
a slightly higher, more sophisticated level. Thus, there is no confirmation 
from anarchic epistemologies, no consistent framework for comparison. In­
stead, by extending the Islamic critique to new descriptions of modern Western 
society, we add vocabulary and precision to Islamic critiques, which remain 
complete and unswerving affirmations of health for humankind , racked in 
the modem world by physical, spiritual, and moral illness. 

Two representatives of this anarchic and radical thought are Juergen Haber­
mas and Michel Foucault. Both rebut effons to summarize or classify their 
work. Especially with Foucault, such encapsulization is seen as the very 
negation of his thought, which is designed to unravel set ways of thinking. 
To some degree, however, we may engage these thinkers in their rejection 
of the modem Western episteme. After a short introduction of the t\\O thinkers, 
and a summary of the Islamic critique of Western epistemologies up to these 
two thinkers, we proceed to a detalled analysis of particular aspects of their 
works. 

Juergen Habermas writes in difficult German. His thought processes 
are very logical and well-considered, but his arguments are often very com­
plex and difficult to grasp. There is probably no single Habermas theory. 
although there are many continuities. I intend to confine my analysis to one 
book, Erkenntnis und lnteresse, ("Knowledge and Human Interests"), which 
traces the development of Western thought and is the groundwork for much 
of his later, more refined work.J He characterizes in this book the search 
for a true philosophical system as the search for a presuppositionless theory 
which would avoid circular hermeneutics. He notices that many systems are 
indeed logical and consistent, but they aJl rest on a priori assumptions (i.e. , 
assumptions made before the systematic argument actually begins). 
Hermeneutics, the science of interpretation, is bound to be circular, it seems, 
because all interpretative proofs in fact refer to some previous proof for their 
validity. The latter proof is then really an assumption, but an assumption 
which makes sense if you agree with what it supposedly proves. So, the value 
of the system rests on assumptions which are acceptable only because they 

3cf. Thomas McCarty, Communication and the £\IO/ution of Society, (Boston: Beacon 
Press), p. xvi, who mentions that this book is not Habennas' final statement. But while the 
technical details have been revised , the basic premises remain unchanged. 



16 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. I, 1989 

make good proofs after you have accepted the validity of the assumptions. 
These hidden assumptions, of course, become a tool of domination for an 
elite, and thenceforth no reassessment of the a priori assumptions is possi­
ble. How can one get out of this circular mess which perpetuates a status 
quo of domination and represssion? The solution Habermas achieves is ideal 
communication without presuppositions (or IdeaJ Speech Situation, or 1SS). 
Imagine a society where debate was freely entered into by all members. For 
those members who previously had no voice (minotiries, women, ''Third 
Worlders"). imagine a .. psychoanalysis" which recovers previously suppress­
ed dialogue. This ideaJ society hears all human interests and proceeds, through 
debate, to generalize these interests, to get them worked out, and, through 
compromise. accepted by everyone. The result of these generalizations is 
a supposition. a post hoc assumption. The beauty of such an ideal com­
munication community is that any supposition can be later rejected easily 
without upsetting any fixed structure or pattern. No revolution is needed; 
there is no need to tear out vested interests seeking to q1aintain the starus 
quo. This system aJlows for change, modification, or replacement of any 
of its suppositions and assumptions. Ontology, the science of truth and essential 
being, for Habermas, is in ruins. but out of the ruins comes the ideal com­
munication community, where truth is not objective but is instead that which 
the community determines it to be. Truth is then true in that it is eman­
cipatory and positive. 

From an Islamic perspective, two objections immediately arise which 
we address in detail later. First, interests cannot always be generalized, or 
at least the generaJiz.ation of interests is not proof of its truth content. Se­
cond, truth is grounded not in society, as for Habermas. but in God. Two 
other points emerge. First, the recognition of human interests in knowledge 
and society leads to a promising rejection of previous Western epistemologies 
which were positivistic, objective, and material. Second, the working out 
of interests within the community needs to be set next to the "ummatic" criti­
que of Islamic sociaJ science. 

Michel Foucault [died 1984] writes in very engaging French. Although 
he uses some neologisms, he ingeniously offers very imaginative and creative 
ideas using a standard vocabulary. As with Habermas, Foucault does not 
have a single theory. In fact, Foucault pioneered the idea that the author 
has no relation to his work after it is written; from then on, the author has 
no more significant interpretation of the work than any other reader. Foucault 
very clearly locates the forces which created modern society by examining 
the change of two epistemes. from the Classical Age to the Modern Age. 
In his Archaeology of Knowledge, he makes a case that ail history must be 
anaJyzed in terms of its own period. He shows the absurdity of submitting 
a medieval medical text to a modern framework: he also rejects a vaJue judge-



Enc A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habcrmas and Foucault 17 

ment ranking one society in one time above another society. His study of 
the origins of modem psychology and medicine locates an interest in enveloping 
irrationality with rationality so that unreason and madness could be first 
described (and entrapped) in rational terms-and then silenced. Both Haber­
mas and Foucault are intrigued by psychoanalysis, which they believe is a 
means to get at suppressed dialogues. A patient represses his desire and covers 
that desire by speaking in symbolic language. But the symbolic language 
signals the psychoanalyst to dig beneath the surface to extract the patient's 
real feelings and make the symbolic discourse meaningful . Foucault writes 
that "psychoanalysis advances in making the unconscious speak, through the 
conscious, in the direction of that fundamental region where the relations 
of representation and finality come into play."4 

Much of Foucault's work aims at releasing events and people from con­
strictions placed by culture and society. This releasing is called by Foucault 
"archaeology", where we unravel and dig out ideas that were silenced from 
accumulated and limiting patterns of knowledge. History is as much what 
we choose to talk about as what we choose to ignore. Archaeology is the 
later attempt to find truths which history has spoken over and silenced. Foucault 
defines archaeology as that which seeks .. to untie all those knots that historians 
have patiently tied; it increases ctifferences, blurs the Lines of communica­
tion, and tries to make it more difficult to pass from one thing to another". 5 

Foucault's ideas offer a sophisticated critique of Western society. He 
reaches a vantage point but, unlike Habermas, he does not see where society 
should go or is going. Instead. he sees that modern man is ephemeral and 
will disappear: we used to have human beings without Man and we will once 
again have human beings without Man. Of course an Islamic critique also 
rejects the rightful existence of modern, secular Man. This Man is an aber­
ration. completely separate from what humankind was created to be. Although 
Foucault does not move in any direction after reaching his vantage point, 
his critique is a strong tool for locating the knowledge configurations which 
produced modem man. He writes that 

Meanwhile, it is comforting and a profound relief to think that 
man is nothing but a recent invention. a figure who is but two 
centuries old, a simple wrinkle in our knowledge, and one which 
will disappear when it will have found a new form. 6 

4Micbcl Foucault , Les mors er /es choses. (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) p. 385. (my 
translation) . 

5Micbel Foucault, trans. by M. F. Tavistock. 711e Archaeology of Knowledge. (N.Y. : 
Pantheon . 19n) , p. liU. 

6Micbel Foucault, Les mors et /es choses, op cit. , p. xxiii . my translation. 



18 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. I. 1989 

The ephemeral nature of man is reflected in Lhe fleeting definitions of 
the academic disciplines. The late Professor lsma'il R. al Faruqi made the 
point that, although the academic disciplines "have achieved autonomous status 
in the universities only during the last century, the forces which led to their 
emergent success are about two centuries old."'7 

There are numerous points from which to date the birth of the modern 
world in Europe and the death of the traditional world . In essence, the turn­
ing point is when the Church's control of knowledge dissemination was broken 
by thinkers who overturned knowledge by pulling the subject of knowledge 
and the goal of inquiry out of heaven and placing them squarely on Man. 
Full of their fanatic belief that they had life and a new birth , and perceiving 
the period before as dark and infinitely distant, thinkers named this upheaval 
the Renaissance. The Renaissance is that abhorrent time when man, having 
opened up a completely novel field- himself- begins to explore the physical 
world and achieve a myriad of "successes." Frustrated with the discipline 
and submission required of all true seekers of .knowledge, this newly modem 
Man became arrogant and big-headed, convinced of the possibility of achieving 
immortality without God. In medicine, as Foucault points out, the corpse 
becomes the all important focus of the scientist. The cold, spiritless body 
lying on the slab will now define life itself. The stiff corpse is exclusively 
man's property, not God's, and thereby modem Man redefines his relation­
ship with the universe. He is now lord of a universe that is material, visible, 
and susceptible to machine logic and intuitionless thought, to wisdomless 
science. Rene Guenon (Shayk.h ~bd al Wahab) characterizes this new direc­
tion as "humanism." This does not mean kindness and gentleness; rather, 
it means a complete rejection of God and the concepts of creation, guidance, 
and submission. He writes that 

there is one word which was honored in the Renaissance, and which 
summarizes the entire program of modern civilization. This word 
is "humanism;" it means in fact to reduce everything to purely 
human proportions, to abstract all principles of superior order, 
and, we could see symbolically, to tum from heaven under the 
pretext of conquering earth. The Greeks, whose example we were 
supposep to be following, had never been so far away in this sense, 
even at the time of their worst intellectual decadence, and at least 
the utilitarian preoccupations were never put in first place with 
the Greeks, as will happen soon with us in the modern world. 
"Humanism" was already the first form of what would become 
contemporary "laicism;" and , desiring to ground everything in 

7Isma'il al Faruqi, Social and Natural Sciences, op cit. , p. 9. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 

human measure (taken for an end in itself), we have ended up 
by descending, from stage to stage, to the level of that which is 
the most inferior, and [ we have ended up) by no longer searching 
for anything but the satisfaction of needs inherent in the material 
side of nature; this is a search very much illusory, finally, because 
it creates always even more artificial needs which it cannot 
satisfy.''8 

19 

Tied into this is the idea that the source of knowledge and truth comes 
not from the heavens but from human and material realities. (Contrast this 
with Feuerbach's ideas in The Essence of Chris1ianity. where the wine which 
symbolized Jesus's blood in the eucharist is made into the symbol of Wine, 
and bread, previously elevated to Jesus's Flesh, is "elevated" to plain bread.) 
From a perspective of sacred science, Guenon criticizes modern science. 

This same science of which [the modern world) is so proud 
represents nothing but a simple deviation and is a caricature of 
true science, which, for us. is identified completely by what we 
have called "sacred science" or "'traditional science." Modern science, 
proceeding from the arbitrary limitation of knowledge of a certain 
order, and which is the most inferior of all, that of material or 
sensate reality, has lost, by the fact of this limitation and the con­
sequences which immediately follow, aJI intellectual value, at least 
if we give "intellectual" its full meaning, if we refuse to participate 
in the "rationalist" error, that is, to assimilate pure intelligence 
to reason, or, which comes to the same thing, to deny intellectual 
intuition. What is at the bottom of this error, is at the bottom of 
a great many other modern errors, and is the very root of the 
entire deviation of science, as we have explained, is that which 
can be called "individualism," which is the same as the antitradi­
tional spirit itself, and whose multiple manifestations. in all realms. 
constitutes one of the most important factors of the disorder of 
our age.9 

Foucault reaches a similar point with respect to his analysis of man, 
but he does not carry his ideas as far as Guenon, who re-proposes a sacred 
science. 

Let us summarize the limitations of some of the first social scientific 
theories in the West. Comte and Durkheim believed that social phenomena, 

8Rene Guenon Ll962). la Crise de la Monde Modeme, (Luvic a11d Company, IW5) pages 
31-32 , my <»m translation. 

9Rene Guenon, ibid, p. 88. 



20 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. I, 1989 

because they were so complex and numerous, were not subject to individual 
influence. Therefore, because no one person could influence social phenomena, 
it must be possible to discover general, objective, and universal general laws 
of society. The concept was that behind the confusion of social events and 
language, patterns could be discovered, patterns which were general and univer­
sal precisely because they existed beyond any individual's control. 

A similar idea of nomological social science (the search for general, 
universal laws) is seen in the works of Marx. He believed Lhat societies, 
capital, and language were all the product of past societies. capital. and 
language. This was in contradistinction to the "Robinson Crusoe" view of 
economic activity, where economic success is attributed to an individual's 
hard work, as if he existed alone on an island. Of course this "Robinson 
Crusoe" view ignores structures and beneficial patterns as well as advan­
tageous ownership positions in production , while concealing the contribu­
tion of past wealth and the exploitation of an entire working class or an entire 
peripheral country. 

Marx's structuralist approach enabled him to reject the superficial self­
understanding of elites and instead locate conflict between rich and poor in 
the structure of production. Thus, if you understood material existence to 
be true philosophy, and if you could identify people by their position in a 
structure of production (as workers or owners), then you could correctly 
perceive the locus of the true struggle for emancipation. Add to this a knowledge 
of economic history and the stages through which work and technology have 
progressed (modes of production), and you could begin to perceive that material 
life was heading toward a final stage where workers in fact owned the pro­
duct of their labor, where everyone could self-objectify. and where people 
could fulfill themselves through labor. One common thread running through 
these paradigms. labeled positivist and structuralist, is the ignoring and quali­
fying of the self-understanding of the actors involved. In Foucault's eyes, 
this means clamping down a particular kind of reason which reason cannot 
comprehend, namely, madness. From this perspective. we understand 
Foucault's fascination with and concern for Van Gogh , Nerval, Artaud, and 
others. (Artaud delved periodically into Eastern mysticism and Sufism: at 
other times, he was confined in mental hospitals.) 

In the 1920s and 1930s. some leftist intellectuals in Europe began to 
perceive Lhat the communist experiment in the Soviet Union was turning 
totalitarian. An entire left movement began, with intellectuals exploring ways 
to bring the material benefits and emancipation of Marxism to society without 
a concomitant expansion of state power and lotalitarianism. Forty years later. 
in the U.S., a similar movement began, this time to counter the consumer 
oriented and increasingly aggressive "establishment." Although Godfrey 
Hodgson's America in Our Ttme has demonstrated that the counter-culture 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 21 

movements in the U.S. stemmed from materialistic roots and maintained an 
enmeshment in consumerism, nevertheless some intellectual offshoots of the 
196CYs counter-culture movements reveal a commitment to individual autonomy. 
self-definition. and anti-materiaJism. In a w.iy, both the European Left move­
ment and some of the American counter-culture movements are similar in 
that they both began with disillusionment, in Europe with communism gone 
totalitarian. and in the U.S. with technological progress and material success 
gone consumer and imperialistic. 

lo the U.S., some counter culture intellectuals began to question the ability 
of the establishment to understand the social and politicaJ aspirations of blacks 
and people in the Third World. Project Camelot, an operation funded by 
the U.S. government to get social scientists to understand the instruments 
of insurrection, seemed to epitomize sociaJ science research in the U.S. as 
manipulative, imperialistic, and dishonest. These people believed they had 
to discover new w.iys to communicate and conduct science, because the usual 
forms of discourse had been co-opted or repressed by materiaJistic, sick peo­
ple. At the heart of this intellectuaJ questioning of the status quo is the discovery 
that language had very much to do with oppression. Language, and , worse 
still , the study of language, seemed to serve to oppress people trying to become 
emancipated. Language itself, feminists believed, served to repress women 
and keep them down. The making burgeoise of language made language itself 
a basic tool of repression. Only by perceiving the structure of society could 
the repression itself be perceived. Foucault's major focus is language and 
discourse. Haberrnas talks of the need to recover previously suppressed 
dialogues through a kind of psychoanaJysis. The idea is that the structure 
of society and language has made many people linguistically and economically 
incompetent, or, in Foucault's terms, silenced. The very structure of society 
itself renders many people uneducated, without self-esteem, unable to ex­
press ideas, unable to get things of value. If politics has to do with the way 
things of value are distributed in society, then these are people unable to 
compete in a political world. 

The entire program of Project Camelot called into question the idea that 
science may legitimately be instrumentalist, that we do, and ought to, learn 
in order to control. In its most sophisticated form , this radical or anarchic 
criticism becomes what Foucault calls bio-technico-power. If you look at 
madmen and incompetents from this perspective, you see that perhaps they 
are rejected because they are simply unable to function in a materiaJist, "ra­
tional" modern world. The crux of the anarchic criticism is that the modem 
world's way of thinking-logical, rationaJ, instrumental-is a recent, aber­
rant form of domination. 

Another problem perceived by anarchic critics w.is the view in modern 
science of the rational, value-maximizing man. The criticism was that the 



22 The American Journal of Jslamic Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. 1, 1989 

view of rationality was limitfog the range of analysis because the rationality 
in question, instead of being universal , was actually the product of a specific, 
local, recent world view. How, they argued, could analysts with a Christian , 
Western view of rationality adequately understand Africans, fndians, or Bud­
dhists? And do people really value-maximize? Do people really have such 
a clear view of their goals and the means available to them? ls value­
maximization yet another fancy term perpetuating the status quo? Positive, 
structured , instrumentalist science was thus pronounced impoverished. In 
order to rebuild philosophy and rid social science of its positivism, instrumen­
talism, and false objectivisrn, Richard Bernstein resurrected Aristotle's praxis 
(the idea that politics was not theory, and therefore not an absolute science, 
but rather the art of deciding at the time what to do in complex situations). 
He also resurrected Dilthey's Kulturwissenschaft (the systematic argument 
that the human sciences were completely and essentially distinct from the 
natural sciences, and that the attempt to use natural scientific methodology 
in social sciences was fundamentally misleading and erroneous) in order to 
show that there is something fundamentally wrong with putting human ac­
tivity on a quantitative grid. This is a new philosophy, a new anthropology: 
the study of human beings which is not positivistic, not instrumentalist, not 
strictly structuralist (like Althusser's theories), and makes no universal claims 
of objectivity. This new anthropology rejects the notion that a complete 
understanding of human activity may ignore the self-conception and self­
description of involved people. In this way, positivism, the idea that we are 
able to recognize nomological patterns in human activity. is rejected. Similarly, 
the idea that science ought primarily to understand human activity in order 
to change or direct it is rejected. This approach is not strictly structuralist 
because while the critique is aided by structuralisms in finding those who 
benefit from and those who suffer by virtue of their position in societal struc­
tures and patterns, the nomological aspect of Marxist structuralism is often 
rejected. In other words, this approach demands a sensitivity to structures 
in society which are not apparent, lying as they do beneath the surface. (This 
is in fact Levi-Strauss' definition, where he says his approach stemmed from 
a synthesis of geology and Marxism and culminated in the image that a good 
structuralist would recognize simple, hidden, underground forces creating 
complex. surface, visible social phenomena) . 

Moving toward a full, interpretative description of society, many of the 
thinkers in this new movement appropriated Weber as a founding father of 
social science. Because Weber's work is partly a response to the nornological , 
grand theorizing of Marxism, his interpretative sociology is seen by some 
to contribute to non-positive, non-instrumental , non-structural analysis. Thus 
Geertz and others espousing a "thick description" employ some Weberian 
concepts. But there are two major criticisms of Weber. The first is that Weber's 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 23 

theory is overly individualistic (and thus subject to a Marxist critique which 
takes Weberian analysis as simply the case of the bourgeoisie justifing 
themselves and their wealth unscientifically). The second is that his con­
cepts are often analytically vague (such as his ideal types). This second criticism 
is especially damaging to Parsonian structural-functionalism, which revolves 
around supposedly unambiguous conceptualizations. About Talcott Parsons, 
Byas Ba-Yunus notes that his conceptualizations serve the interests of those 
seeking to maintain the status quo. Furthermore, this approach equates moder­
nization with Westernization; i.e., industrial institutions cannot be developed 
and maintained without a quick emergence of institutions which characterize 
Western societies- for instance, materialism, secularism, democracy. and 
devotion to work. lO 

Into this arena of philosophical debate enter Habennas and Foucault. 
As the postwar leader of the Frankfurt School, Habermas tries to counter 
forces of totalitarianism from the right (fascism) and from the left 
(conununism). His project is to direct society to free the oppressed people 
who were identified by Marx without engendering a totalitarian state repressing 
other people and to encourage freedom of thought without allowing another 
dominating reign of an epistemology which is presuppositionless-full. As 
the torch bearer (despite his protestations) of the French radical left (although 
with his share of critics). Foucault tries to identify the forces which created 
the present episteme and to unravel meaning previously silenced by this 
episteme. If one goal sits at the top of the agenda here, it is probably the 
attempt to understand the relationship between knowledge and power (or 
interests) and the fleshing out of social designs which would prevent oppression 
(be contra power) but still be true to knowledge. Their failure lies, in the 
end, in their posiLive view of philosophy (positive because it·assumes that 
philosophy must fit human nature) which starts off skewed with an inadequate 
understanding of human nature. Let us now approach in more detail Habermas 
and then Foucault, with special attention to their views of human nature. 
My thesis is that Habermas and Foucault do not extend their radical , anarchic 
perspectives far enough to realiz.e that, although they have rejected the pitiful, 
limited, distorted god of Europe, they are not able to say that God is dead. 
While slightly better than the fanatics of Progress and Technology, they ignore 
the richness of traditional society. For Foucault, this is more damaging: 
Foucault could not unravel the meaning and unsilence the millions upon 
millions of voices which affirm, and still affirm, the unity of God and the 
complete example of His Prophet Mu])ammad (~AAS). 

Perhaps the most visible theory of philosophy, and one very prone to 
attack, was logical positivism, and it is against this theory that the radical 

JOoyas Ba-Yunus, Social and Natural Sciences, op cit., p. 25. 



24 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6, No. 1, 1989 

or anarchic critiques attained sophistication. In essence a coldly rational, 
exploitative theory, logical positivism was attacked by those intellectuals who 
strove to locate meaning in human practice and activity. Richard J. Bernstein 
returns to Aristotle's conception of ethics, and especially the primacy of praxis 
leading to well-tempered reflection (phronesis). Ethical behavior, in this 
scheme, is not a "science," but is instead an approach to practice. The truth 
of things ethical is therefore not objectively apparent and is also not subject 
to scientific, quantitative methodology. Rather, the truth of things is to be 
found in the pursuit of the golden mean through practice, using mature 
self-reflection. 

An entire movement, called post-modernism, attempts to rebuild the 
academic fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology using these insights. 
One scholar describes post-modern anthropology's foundation thusly: 

Discourse is the maker of the world, not its mirror .... It ends 
the separation of word and world.created by writing and sustained 
by language-as-logos, that "univocal picture" protected in oord from 
the standpoint of the all-seeing transcendental ego whose real 
message is that the world is a fable. 11 

A technique of discourse is then praxis. The Frankfurt School takes this 
concept of praxis and applies to it a neo-Marxian perspective. In such a 
perspective, praxis is that struggle for emancipation which only comes through 
action. because the elites have co-opted science. theory, indeed the entire 
episreme. Accordingly, a conclusion reached is that if theory and science 
work to reinforce the status quo, then those who wish to become emancipated 
must find their truth through the struggle for autonomy and responsibility. 

For Aristotle, praxis is an approach to fields of study or endeavor that 
applies when rheoria is inappropriate. Bernstein adds to Aristotle by drawing 
on twentieth century phenomenology and hermeneutics, insisting that in fact 
praxis has the same status as theoria. Bernstein makes this argument drawing 
from Dilthey's insistence that the study of human culture is ontologically 
different from the study of physical nature . ln this perspective, Dilthey's 
Naturwissenschaft simply requires theory, and therefore is to be judged 
according to the criteria of theory, while Kulturwissenschaft, which requires 
practice. must be judged with the criteria of practice. But the pervasiveness 
of theory in society, and the be! ittling of practice and human meaning, prods 
some neo-Marxists to identify theory as part of the superstructure of ideology 
and therefore see practice, not theory, as liberating and emancipatory. While 
Marxists generally stress technological fetters repressing \\Qrkers, neo-Marxists 

11 Steven A. Tyler, Pose-modem Anthropology, 1986, p. 23. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 25 

bring out the idea of psychic fetters silencing and making incompetent all 
non-elites. 

The linguistic revolution of Noam Chomsky12 fundamentally questioned 
the assumption that words (de Saussure's paroles) uttered are drawn from 
a storehouse of language (de Saussure's langue) . Instead Chomsky argues 
that people have an innate knowledge, some kind of world-ordering technique 
for which it is possible to write a universal grammar. From this innate 
knowledge, competent speakers continually make new oords and new phrases. 
Political activism is then seen as the way people, through language and social 
interaction, create a new world. Through practice and activity people question 
presuppositions and myths, create new myths, and socially create what is truth. 

Habermas' project has been described as a hermeneutic/phenomenological 
view focusing on communicative interaction. Habermas believes that in 
communicative interaction, as one scholar writes, 

social actors achieve an intersubjective understanding of themselves 
and of their world . In addition, communicative interaction is the 
means by which people establish mutually agreed-upon criteria 
for determining ideals. 11 

The methodological cornerstone of this system is a presuppositionJess 
epistemology. 

Habermas transcends the bane of systematic philosophers-the 
hermeneutic vicious circle- first by noting that all previous epistemologies 
begin with a presupposition, a belief that there are a priori concepts with 
innate validity. But this positive belief is harmful and repressive. Instead, 
Habermas transcends the hermeneutic circle by asking that societies choose 
presuppositions which are continuously and freely debated. One scholar 
explains that Habermas 

is arguing that the domain object (facts) themselves are 
intersubjective meanings constituted in a sociocultural matrix which 
must be interpreted by social action.1.1 

Habermas recognizes the idea that there are structures of inequality. He 
recognizes the need for praxis to get at truth. Systematic philosophies always 

12Noam Chomsky is also a champion of human rights, including lhe rights of P-aJcstinians. 
He has been a vigorous critic of U.S. state power in Vietnam. Central America. and occupied 
Palestine. 

llSabia and Walluhs, eds. Changing Social Science: Crirical 11uwry and Other Critical 
Perspectives (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1983) p. 143. 

1.1Dickens. in Sabia and Wallulis. Changi11g Social Science. op cit. . p. 143. 



26 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. 1. 1989 

start with incontestable presuppositions, a priori statements which do not 
allow for evaluation. Habermas avoids this problem by allowing society to 
continually re-·evaluate its presuppositions in a free dialogue situation. The 
truth of things then lies not in some objective methodology, but in the "invitation 
to debate," in which free society finds relevance for itself. 

But while Habennas astutely locates the Western world's theory of 
knowledge in social theory, and specifically in power relations, he does not 
disown his Greek and classical European assumptions that there are no 
fundamentally ineconcilable differences in society. One scholar (Moon) notes 
that we cannot 

avoid accepting an irreducible plurality of possible value systems. 
I do not think it possible to show that a consensus on values would 
necessarily emerge in an ISS (Ideal Speech Situation). The basis 
of Habermas' argument turns on the idea of "generalizable interests" 
as a basis for the validity of nonns. t~ 

Habermas' conception of a realm of non-authoritarian and unconstrained 
dialogue, similar to Marx's unfettered community society, "an ideal speech 
situation involving a consensus theory of truth,"16 assumes that all diversity 
can be compromised. 

Habermas begins one argument in Erkenntnis und lmeresse with the idea 
that humans must sustain their life through work and interaction. But there 
is a "micro" dimension, a psychosocial level, to human beings in society, 
which for Habermas means that people are subject to Freudian instinctual 
renunciation. There is also a "macro" dimension of human beings in society, 
and this is simply the Marxist understanding that relations of production 
structure society. Habermas emphasizes the distortion such structuring causes 
to human expression. The macro dimension means that people work and 
interact under the pathological compulsion of deformed communication, where 
communication is distorted by relations of production. This necessity of 
sustaining life, or the interest of self-preservation, necessarily takes the form 
of the interest of reason. Here is where knowledge and power interest 
synthesize. For Habermas, then, reason must be freed from both Freudian 
instinctual problems and distorted relations of production. 

Thus both levels, the micro and macro, must be altered. This change, 
Habennas suggests, only develops through critique and confirms itself through 

15Moon, in Sabia and Wallulis, ibid, p. 181. 
!(,Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking lnrellecmal History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 

1983) p. 164. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Tslam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 27 

the practical consequence of critique, becoming thereby metacritique. The 
emancipatory process of freeing social consciousness by allowing for practical 
discourse "has no pretensions to possess the truth;' says one scholar. "It is 
intended as an invitation to debate."17 

Habermas distinguishes two levels needing to be altered by debate. The 
first level is that of naked survival (cold pragmatism). the second sophisticated 
survival. What appears as naked survival, he argues, is always at its roots 
a historical phenomenon, a social reality, for it is subject to the criteria of 
what society intends for itself as the good and true life. As the social forces 
of production get more sophisticated, the issue is not naked survival. the 
force driving the organism to adapt to hs environment, but rather a complex 
survival. This argument, distinguishing naked and sophisticated society, seems 
to borrow from Durkheim's ideas of mechanical and organic solidarity. For 
Durkheim, societies become increasingly interactive and the division of labor 
becomes increasingly specialized. A society which divides labor into smaller 
and smaller, increasingly interdependent parts, and makes the elements 
(citizens) interact more and more often , should become stable and peaceful. 
Such a sophisticated society becomes increasingly, in Durkheim's terms, 
"moral ." Of course the proliferation of interactions also serves to remove power 
and autonomy from the individual and increase state power exponentially. 
In Samuel P. Huntington's view, this is the process of institutionalization, 
which in effect is the passive acceptance of decreasing autonomy in the face 
of Westernization and modernization. 

Interests are thereby linked to the function of ego adapting to external 
conditions through learning processes, initiated into the communication system 
of social life-situation (Lebenswelt) by conflict between instinctual aims and 
social constraints. This opens up the issue ofleaming processes. Even assuming 
that what people learn is correct within their society, on what grounds can 
it be assumed that what they learn is good for themselves? This also ties 
into a second criticism of Habermas by Moon which engages E. F. 
Schumacher's ideas on ecology. Schumacher, in Small is Beauriful (politics 
as if people mattered), contracts traditional society's integration with and 
respect for nature with modern society's destruction and manipulation of nature 
for mankind-which only includes highly polluting, aggressive, consumer 
sections of certain countries. 

Believing ontology to be in a state of ruins, Habennas argues that the 
truth of statements is not in ontology, but is linked to the intention of the 
good and true life. Hermeneutics therefore needs to be brought into practical , 
social dialogue. The endeavor of societies ought to be to create a context 

17Garbis Kortian, Meracritique: The Philosophical Argument of J1tergen Habennas. (NY: 
Cambridge University Press, 1980) p. 134. 



28 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sc iences Vol. 6. No. I. 1989 

of free dialogue where, through novel uses of language and practice, people 
become emancipated. But one scholar (Dickens) argues that Habermas has 
rejected the power of language itself to emancipate. Instead , people in the 
ideal society would still be unemancipated, even though they all debated freely. 
Dickens writes that Habermas' revisions fail "to link up with the practical 
domain of communicative interaction, leaving us with only a communicative 
reformulation of liberal pluralism." 18 Tied into this idea , that Habermas has 
not sufficiently provided for emancipation before the debates, is the criticism 
that a genuine search for human nature seems to be missing. Moon remarks 
that --our conception of what is in our interests depends upon our conception 
of the self."19 and this conception could very well not be amenable to 
generalizable interests. From an Islamic perspective though, the conception 
of self is utterly opposed to that of modern Western epistemologies and thus 
any "truth" worked out within such societies must be declared a rejection 
of our nature and shirk. The framework Habermas proposes for dialogue 
is unacceptable. Writing about ecology, Moon argues that "what is in dispute 
in this case is not different interests but conflicting moral ideals and world­
views."20 Clearly this argument extends to Islamic world-views. 

We see, then , that Habermas has successfully challenged the Western 
episteme which represses and exploits and opens the way for imperialism 
and racism. But even though Habermas is a champion of the left , nevertheless 
his analysis is simply not radial enough. He does not follow his own criticism 
far enough. From an Islamic critique, the Muslim thinker extends a critique. 
which is technically similar to anarchic thought, all the way to the forces 
which created the scientific framework for the rejection of Divine guidance 
and the elevation of Man. Habermas concerns himself, in the end, with 
technical problems of communication. He has not given serious thought to 
human nature. to traditional society, and - is this asking to much?- to Islam. 
A great proportion of the world's people are Muslim; Islamic civilization 
has provided some of the most important scientific discoveries and cultural 
successes; Islamic thought has contributed to all aspects of human endeavor. 
Critical social theory remains entrapped in an episteme which rejects out 
of hand , or ignores, vast numbers of silenced people with ages of history 
and culture. Its violation is not flagrantly racist, imperialist, or exploitative. 
But. in the end, devastatingly, this critique serves to perpetuate a pernicious 
intellectual matrix which gives Man lordship, removes all human responsibility, 
and erects an almost impenetrable wall against prophetic warning. From an 
Islamic critique, the central responsibility of societies is to inform and prepare 

18Dickens, in Sabia and Wallulis, Changing Social Science, op. cit. , p. 154. 
19Moon, in Sabia and Wallulis, ibid, p. 154. 
20Moon, in Sabia and Wallulis, ibid. p. 187. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 29 

people for eternity and the meeting on the Day of Judgement with God. Not 
only has modern society completely abdicated its responsibility. Worse still, 
modem societies obviate the individual who perceives God's signs and remove 
from that individual all of the terms and vocabularies with which he or she 
might discuss God's signs. Gai Hasan Eaton explains that in light of the 
deviation of modern society, no compromise or cooperation is moral. He 
writes about the comparative and conciliatory approach to modem society that 

what is questionable is the propriety of diluting truth for the sake 
of meeting error halfway and of applying evolutionary theory to 
the marks of eternity embedded in the matrix of the temporal 
world ... There is a limit to how far men can go in interpreting the 
Divine Word in terms of a language from which all the appropriate 
words have been excluded. If people have gone away from the 
central place that is their real home, then charity requires that 
they should be shown the way back. To imagine one can take the 
centre out of them - while they stay where they are- is folly. 21 

Habennas does not develop the techniques with which to fully critique mcxlem 
Western epistemologies, but Foucault does. Edward W. Said finds Foucaultian 
analysis extremely valuable in portraying the discourse oflsrael and the West 
as one which is the second half of Israel's control over Palestinians. By 
discovering how resistance to genocide, religious persecution , and state power 
of inhuman dimensions is reduced, in the Israeli-West djscourse, to mere 
anti-Semitism, Said hones the techniques which Palestinians might use to 
further their cause. Foucault talks to struggles which "are a refusal of the 
abstraction of economic and ideological state violence which ignor~s who 
we are collectively, or individually, and also a refusal of scientific and 
administrative inquisition which determines who you are.'>n As a silenced 
people, Palestinians are simply numbers to be controlled. One poem of 
resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine especially confirms Foucault's 
idea: Mahmud Darwish's Bitiiqah Hawiyah. I find in Foucault a sensitivity 
to the pernicious trend in the mcxlern world toward a profusion and inundation 
of state power. Because Foucault's analysis is more radical , because Foucault 
attempts more than Habermas to unravel silences, he is to be faulted more 
for his failure to understand the traditional world . The people in the Renaissance 
believed themselves, rightly, to be a vast distance away from the Middle Ages 
(the Dark Ages) , even though the span of time was measured in decades. 

21Gai Hasan Eaton, The Keys to the Kingdom. (London: Bodley Head, 1977) page 180. 
12Michel Foucault, quoted in Karlis Racevskis. Michel Foucault and the Subversion of 

Intellect. op. cit. , pg. 20. 



30 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. 1, 1989 

The period of the middle ages, as Seyyid Hossein Nasr has remarked, was 
as far away from the Renaissance as it is from the modem world. This inability 
of Foucault to go beyond the caricature of the "Dark Ages" is inexcusable 
for someone so skilled at locating the distinctions between a seventeenth century 
Classical episteme and a later modem episteme. One critic of Foucault, 
Baudrillard, engages in a theoretical terrorism designed to "unveil the pretenses, 
the deceits, and the tautologies of the value systems that constitute Western 
civilization."23 Baudrillard argues that Foucault is insufficiently anarchic, 
that he does not go beyond the "simulacra" of modern society. His argument, 
Racevskis summarizes, is that modem society depends upon a strategy of 
simulation, on the production of simulacra-that is, of certain effects of truth 
intended to hide the fact that truth does not exist. . . . Scandals, such as 
Watergate, are useful to bide the inherent scandalousness of the entire 
system.~24 

One theme in Foucault's work is the pervasiveness of an episteme which 
has in a way created a concept of Man which is limited by a narrow, power­
interest reason. This narrow, strictly empirical conception of Man is called 
an anthropology. Foucault sees that this power-interest has distorted language 
and created modem, empirical, rational Man; when this episteme slides away, 
language will re-emerge and Man will disappear. Foucault does not see what 
comes next, but he is very hopeful that human beings will once again be 
open to different ideas and different ways of communicating. In this section, 
I argue that Foucault's analysis locates well the forces which created this 
present modern episteme and which maintain it, but that his ignorance of 
the vast numbers of people in the world who are competent linguistically, 
in their Islam, prevents him from seeing beyond the modern world either 
to the traditional world or to, i11 sha' Allah, a next world where God's guidance 
is heeded. 

Let us examine his Les mots et Jes choses, "words and things." From 
Foucault's historical (really "archaeological") analysis comes a conclusion 
that Man is a recent invention. "Taking a relatively short chronology and 
a narrowly defined geographic area- Europe since the 16th century-we can 
be sure that man is in it a recent invention."25 Foucault then says that this 
invention of Man bas only occurred in the modem world . One of the keys 
to this episreme is the notion of Same, the words correspond to things, and 
that if things are restricted to empirical and "reasonable" things. then language 
is also restricted to empirical and "reasonable" things. Intuition, spirituality, 
mysticism. madness - all these aspects of human existence are confined. to 

23Kar\is Racevskis, ibid, . p. 151. 
2~Karlis Racevskis. ibid, p. 160. 
:?SMichel Foucault, Les mots et les choses. op. cit .. p. 261 . my translation: the following 

excerp~ are from this same passage. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Tslam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 31 

things empirical and reasonable which language can discuss. The confinement, 
then, is both a prison and a silencer. He writes (with some sarcasm) that 

it is not around him and his secrets which, for a long time, in 
obscurity, knowledge has slithered. In fact, among all the mutations 
which have affected the knowledge of things and their order, the 
knowledge of identities, of difference, of characters, of equivalents, 
of words-in short, in the middle of all the events of that great history 
of the Same-just one, that which had begun one and a half 
centuries ago and which is perhaps about to close, has let the figure 
of man appear. 25 

What has allowed this strange and ordered concept of Man to appear 
··was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge,"' 
meaning the very structure of epistemology itself had to be shaken to allow 
for a confined, imprisoning conception of Man. "Man is an invention which 
the archaeology of our thought demonstrates easily to be of recent date," 
he writes. And indeed, from an Islamic perspective, the Renaissance, the 
industrial revolution, the capitalization of society itself, all of these changes 
are seen as aberrations of society. The structure of what is believed to be 
true changed drastically and harmfully. and the result of these changes is 
a conception of Man which abdicates responsibility and rejects divine guidance. 
For Foucault, the result of those changes is a limited, oppressed Man; for 
the Muslim, this criticism is extended to humankind's nature as created by 
God and invested with tremendous responsibility. 

Continuing in this same passage, Foucault writes that 

if these frameworks were to come to disappear as they appeared , 
if by some event of which we can no more than sense as a possibility, 
but of which we understand at the moment now neither the form 
nor the promise, (if) they would slide away, as happened at the 
tum of the 18th century with the foundation of classical thought ­
then we can well bet that man will be erased, like a face made 
in sand at the edge of sea. 25 

Truly the conception of man is like a face made in the sand, and the sea 
will rise to wipe out all traces of it. With the ephemeral and misguided 
conception of man erased, wiped off forever, perhaps the possibility will 
arise for the Islamic reintegration of human thought and endeavor, fulfilling 
the role of khilafah al ard and all the responsibility this implies. 

Foucault also examines the inherent contradictions and failures of an 
.. anthropology." Although Foucault ignores revelation, he recognizes a 



32 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. I, 1989 

knowledge beyond the narrow confines of empirical reality. He says "It is 
without doubt not possible to give transcendental value to empirical contents, 
nor to displace to the side a constituent subjectivity, without giving way, 
at least silently, to an anthropology.'"6 What has happened inevitably, he 
argues, is that lowering or reducing things with transcendental value to merely 
their empirical contents leads to an "anthropology." If the reduction is implicit 
or hidden, then it leads "silently" to an anthropology, which he then defines as 

a way of thinking where the rightful limits of understanding (and 
as a consequence, of all empirical knowledge) are at the same 
time the concrete forms of existence, precisely such as are given 
in the same empirical form. 

This process is a vicious circle, because the set of all knowable knowledge 
is reduced to that which is empirically accessible, and then this limited 
knowledge is identified as the complete "describer" of Man's concrete form 
of existence. The "signified" must be empirical; this reduces the .. signifier" 
to empirical bounds. Language is thus distorted to allow for this travesty 
of materialism, where supposedly everything reasonable is empirical and can 
therefore be described empirically. This critique is extended, in the Islamic 
critique, as we saw in Gai Hasan Easton's statement that "there is a limit 
to how far men can go in interpreting the divine Word in terms of a language 
from which all the appropriate words have been excluded." 

A final passage from Foucault's Les mots et les choses reiterates some 
of the ideas we considered above. He writes that 

all this modern episceme-that which was formed toward the end 
of the 18th century and serves still as the positive base of our 
knowledge, that which has constituted the singular mode of being 
of man and the possibility of empirical understanding-all this 
episteme was linked to the disappearance of Discourse and its 
monotonous reign, to the fall of language at the side of objectivity 
and to its multiple reappearances. If this same language resurges 
now with more and more insistence in a unity which we must, 
but cannot yet, think, isn't it the signal that this entire configuration 
will fall, and that man is about to perish, as the being of language 
shines more strongly at our horizon?21 

The fall of this entire configuration may inaugurate a worldview which allows 

26Michel Foucault, ibid, p. 261, my translation. 
Z7Michel Foucault, ibid, p. 3CJ7, my translation . 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 33 

for divine guidance; or it may inaugurate yet another distortion of human 
nature and the integration of knowledge and revelation. But God knows best. 

For Foucault, the language of this entire configuration imprisons people 
as surely as a jail confines its inmates. And indeed, this is a world where 
sexuality. diet, sleep, leisure, and work are all confined through an erroneous 
and pernicious configuration of knowledge, which increases state power and 
decreases individual autonomy. The vast machinery of repression which distorts 
language and knowledge is most visibly manifested in the prison, where inmates 
must eat, sleep, rest, and work according to the regulations of the state, and 
where their sexuality and family life is negated by an all-powerful state. In 
fact, the modern world is worse than such a prison, because even the 
transcendental or spiritual is controlled and silenced. By reducing the unseen 
world to material dimensions, and thus silencing it. state power and control 
extends to the spiritual realm too. There can be no spiritual patience for 
someone physically restricted if the very possibility of spiritual succor is 
denied and silenced. 

State power is not a new phenomenon , and below I argue that the Sunnah 
of the Companions (RAA) provides the basis for identifying political power 
which works against Islam. But the pervasiveness, and hidden, covert, aspects 
of state power may be new. A traditional society. with its large ponion of 
intelligent generalists who have studied Islamic law, its decentralized bases 
of power, and its firm commitment to serve God, has many techniques to 
confront and prevent centralized state power. But now, with the sole focus 
of societies resting squarely on Man, the entire configuration of knowledge 
works toward centralized state power. Success, which must be measured 
materially in a material worldview, only comes about through participation 
in a bureaucratic, centralized state power. Education also requires thorough 
service to this power. You would have to be mad , unsuccessful, or 
unreasonable-in the terms of this modern episteme- to raise a child with 
the values vouchsafed by Islam for fifteen hundred years. indeed by Islam 
since the first human being appeared. In Islam, rightful categorizations are 
the indjvidual, the family, and the Ummah. The modern nation-state is nothing 
but an extension of the modern episteme's method of centralizing power and 
preventing knowledge from including the unseen realm. Kalim Siddiqui in 
Social and Natural Sciences writes that 

all nation-states are the product of Western civilization and its period 
of colonial dominance. Their purposes, structures, and behavior 
patterns are all alike whether the nation-state happens to be in 
Europe .... , in Africa, Asia. or America. 28 

211Kalim Siddiqui, in Social and Natural Sciences, op cit., p. 23. 



34 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences Vol. 6. No. 1, 1989 

The level of the nation-state is one inadequate for solving the political problems 
of this century, especially those of nuclear proliferation, ecology, and ethnicity. 
The resurgence of local politics, religious revival. and regional cooperation 
signal the dissatisfaction people feel with the nation-state. The nation-state 
is not recognized in fslam and in fact detracts from the potential power of 
the Ummah. Although this idea is acknowledged by many Islamic thinkers 
and revivalists (Sayyid Qutb, Mawlarui Mawdudi, and others), the pervasiveness 
of the modern episteme has not always been clearly seen. Left thinkers accede 
that it is not possible to run a Marxist economy in a capitalist world-system. 
How much greater is the resistance of the modern world to the establishment 
of the Ummah as the leader of human societies, or to the implementation 
of God's law in society, or to the stubborn refusal of Muslims to cede? 

Islam gives tremendous power and responsibility to the Muslimun and 
Muslimat. No man or woman must (or may!) bow to another. Concurrently, 
Islam requires cohesiveness and cooperation among the members of the 
Ummah. Neither individual autonomy (in submission to God) nor the Ummah's 
social cohesiveness may be sacrificed, neither aspect of Islam may be, even 
temporarily, forfeited for uworthy" ends. I find this concurrent, integrated 
facet of Islam eloquently described by 'Abdu)J:lamid AbuSulayman in Social 
and Natural Sciences. Speaking about the second aspect of Islam. that of 
the integration of the Ummah and its importance, he mentions that "students 
of history and political theory have never succeeded in correctly understanding 
the cause and meaning of Abu Bak.r's decision''2Q to fight the backsliders. 
"When tribesmen rebelled against his authority and stopped the payment of 
z.akiir to the central authority of the Islamic state, the question for him was 
not one of faith .... For Abu Bakr, the question concerned the social system." 
Many people who have no idea how Abu Bakr (RAA) lived, see the Ridda 
War as some personal plan for aggrandizement. In fact, Abii Bakr (RAA) 
lived a life which was a model of piety, quiet reflection and devotion , and 
firm understanding of the duties incumbent upon an Islamic leader. He 
succeeded in convincing the Companions that God required an Islamic leader 
to maintain the social and political strength of the Ummah. Abii Dharr al 
Ghifari (RAA), as' Abdu!J:lamid AbiiSulayman recounts, embodied the vision 
of Madinah with his statement that ''.All wealth, especially and including the 
new-conquered wealth, belongs to Allah." This statement opposed Mu'awiyah 
of the Quraysh tribe, and 

the confrontation led to the revolts of al-Husayn, Ibn al-Zubayr, 
Muhammad al-Nafs al-Zakiyah, and Zayd ibn 'Ali, all of which 
were brutally crushed. Practically all great thinkers of Islam in 

29< AbdulJ:lamid AbiiSulayman, in Social and Natural Sciences, ibid p. 109. 



Eric A. Winkel Remembering Islam: A Critique of Habermas and Foucault 

the first century and a half following the Rashidun caliphates were 
alienated from the state leadership and sympathetic to the 
opposition. 30 

35 

The imams who strengthened the study of the Sunnah al Nabi (~AAS) met 
with torture, imprisonment, even execution. As members of the 'ulama they 
were charged with the criterion of Prophetic practice. With this criterion 
they sought to restrain rulers and centralized power. The opposition to state 
power, which includes a clear vision of its pervasiveness, and the study and 
implementation of Prophetic practice is a duty especially required of the 
alim , who is required to first describe the modem world and then to apply 
the criterion of the Qur'an (al Furqim) and the Sunnah of the Prophet (~AAS). 

» Abdull:{amid AbiiSulayrrnin. ibid, p. I05. 

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