Editorial

This issue coincides with several momentous events and trends in the world at
large and Muslim nations. The heads or top representatives of the 57 Muslim-
majority nations have held an extraordinary meeting at Makkah under the
Organization of Islamic Conferences’ (OIC) aegis. A major goal is to reacti-
vate and empower the OIC so that it can actively help the ummah deal with its
huge opportunities and challenges. Several salient issues were stressed: the
need for closer interaction, collaboration, and internal reform leading to a
peaceful, pluralistic, and moderate disposition of Islam and Muslims. 

Muslim nations are trying to address their internal weaknesses and build
upon their strengths. In terms of human and material resources, the Muslim
world is composed of three kinds of countries: those with large populations
and poor economies, small populations and rich economies, and with both
fairly large populations backed by rich economic resources. They seem to
believe that Iraq and Iran, the very backbone of the third category, are cur-
rently targeted for long-term occupation. They are exploring how to com-
pensate for one another’s drawbacks and reinforcing their assets.

The OIC declaration, hailed as a historic turning point, stresses that
Muslims take responsibility for their present plight and stop blaming others.
In addition, the organization will be renamed, get a new charter, and be run
by mandatory contributions from member nations. It will also feature con-
flict-resolution and consensus-building mechanisms to resolve both minor
and major conflicts, such as Palestine and Kashmir. The ummah and the
world now wait to see whether such statements are more than rhetoric.

Concurrently, there is an increasing awareness of the futility of cardinal-
directional conflicts and the “clash of civilizations” between the West and
the East, or between the North and the South. Ever more Muslim and other
intellectuals realize that the real confrontation is between powerful global
forces of greed and exploitative profiteering on the one hand, and people of
candor, conscience, and moral orientation on the other. Among the individ-
uals and organizations in the latter camp, there is growing realization of the
need for societal reform toward pluralism, learning from each other, collec-
tive and consultative decision making, basic freedoms for all, peace with
justice, and institution building that is compatible with the speed, complex-
ity, and magnitude of the emerging globalized world.



Serious efforts are afoot at the United Nations to fight “Islamophobia,”
and we observe a powerful surge of inter-faith deliberations and activities all
over the world, which continues to be miniaturized through the telecommu-
nication revolution, globalized consumerism, commerce, climate concerns,
democratization, and privatization. 

Our own nation, prodded by the neo-cons who have landed it in a deep
quagmire, now shows signs of appreciating the value of other alternatives to
using starkly hard power to obtain its strategic objectives. In an attempt to
utilize its soft power, it has launched a public relations pitch to improve its
sinking image, especially among Arabs and Muslims. Let there be substan-
tive policy changes to back up these image-making attempts!

Professional organizations of Muslims, like the Association of Muslim
Social Scientists (AMSS), need to reflect on their mission, goals, and objec-
tives with a view to really contributing to the ummah’s efforts to relieve its
situation. Also, they must evaluate the extent of their involvement by deter-
mining how many scholars, whether tangentially or directly associated with
AMSS, have been consulted by those engaged in these deliberations. 

It is gratifying that most of the recent AMSS conferences and issues of
this journal have reflected these concerns. Worth mentioning are the special
issues on “Islam & Women” and “Debating Moderate Islam.” Both the
International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and AMSS join the readers
in commending the excellent efforts of Drs. Jasmin Zine and Katherine
Bullock for the former, and of Dr. Muqtedar Khan for the latter. 

These civil discourses have gone a long way in initiating civilizational
dialogues on vital global concerns and in allaying people’s unfounded fears. 

Where blind and naked ignorance
Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed,

On all things all day long.
(Alfred Tennyson: “Merlin Vivien”)

Coincidentally, the above-mentioned quote seems to foretell the impact
of both the dysfunctional aspect of the monopolist and propagandist media
and of the corporatization of the post-modern academe. We might recall the
influence on our own isolationist tendencies and ignorance of other regions
and their cultures, of the social science and humanities literatures produced
during the European colonial times, which highlighted intercultural differ-
ences more than the real commonalties of the entire human family. 

Our contemporary academia is too preoccupied with post-modern over-
relativism, where the serious search for truth seems to have been compro-

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mised and rhetoric prevails. As a result, deconstructing discourses in terms
of power words has assumed a hyperbolic significance instead of the com-
parative analysis of validity among contending perspectives. Muslim social
scientists need to appreciate that more information and misinformation do
not necessarily lead to knowledge. Deriving wisdom from a plethora of facts
is becoming more challenging than ever before. 

Hence, the need for illuminating knowledge with valid wisdom (consid-
ering the whole truth and nothing but the truth) and universal principles of
fairness and justice for all; avoiding extreme and desperate measures in all
affairs; and acquiring an acute sense of personal accountability for one's treat-
ment of self, fellow human beings, all other life forms, and the physical envi-
ronment. Contrast this with perspectives based on the caricatures of reality in
John Locke’s empiricism; René Descartes’ separation of mind and body, and
the absoluteness of mathematics (cf. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem);
Adam Smith’s promotion of the evil of selfishness as a self-curing disease;
Charles Darwin’s smashing of a special human mission in life; Karl Marx’s
assassination of the human desire to own and the suppression of individual
initiative; Sigmund Freud’s total freedom from guilt; Ferdinand de Saussure’s
overemphasis on the role of symbols and language structures in capturing the
truth; and Roland Garthe’s, Jacques Derrida’s, Michel Foucault’s (following
Nietzsche’s deicide: death of God), and Julia Kristeva’s declaration of the
author’s death. Obviously, each of these paradigms exaggerates only one
dimension of truth, instead of capturing the whole truth.

The occurrence of so many “isms” of modernity in three centuries, and
as many in the post-modern decades, indicates a confusing void in the intel-
lectual scene as well as a continued subconscious search for the truth, for
human nature cannot remain content without stable core values for too long.
Let the balanced and comprehensive tawhidi perspective applied to various
disciplines fill the void with such values. 

We need to undertake, much more seriously, the task of re-activating
and implementing the Islamization of Knowledge (IOK) project, one of the
original missions of AMSS and IIIT. Regrettably, its implementation has
been slow and spotty because Muslim governments either could not under-
stand its significance or had other priorities. This educational movement is
now more vital than ever in view of the high level of seriousness within the
ruling Muslim elites, democratic or otherwise. In view of the OIC’s extra-
ordinary meetings in rapid succession, we believe that Muslim governments
and intellectuals are now sincerely trying to address the dualism of educa-
tional institutions in their societies. This duality caused the IOK’s founding

Editorial iii



fathers (viz., Ismail al-Faruqi, Taha J. al-Alwani, AdulHamid Abu-Sulay-
man, and others) to see it as both the cause and the effect of the ummah’s
decline. They suggested tackling this problem with tremendous urgency.
Who can deny the need for new curricular and instructional resources to
meet the objectives of ummah’s new reform movements? 

Undoubtedly, theoretical discussions in times of crises are usually post-
poned or take a back seat to immediate problems of survival through defen-
sive and apologetic literature. However, various ongoing projects are cut out
for even crises-ridden professional organizations, for there is a constant need
for demographic and psychographic data on their sponsoring and benefici-
ary communities to enable the latter to plan, design, develop, and evaluate
their activities for further growth and development. Therefore, instead of
remaining mired in image laundering, Muslims must help the ummah solve
its problems and develop its organizations and institutions. They must bal-
ance the ivory tower research with collection, collation, and application of
valid data in order to contribute to societal justice. 

This issue includes Johannes Grundmann’s translated article on
“Shari`ah, Brain Death, and OrganTransplantation: The Context and Effect
of Two Islamic Legal Decisions in the Near and Middle East.” Grundmann
analyzes the Muslim world’s differential acceptance of decisions made by
the Islamic fiqh academies of the OIC and the Muslim World League. The
paper is quite timely, for with the rapidly developing fields of medical sci-
ences, new issues are calling for collective ummatic ijtihad. 

Md. Mahmudul Hasan, in his “The Orientalization of Gender,” shows
how western feminists have promoted am Orientalist-imperialist agenda of
cultural onslaught directed against colonized people. He illustrates this
assertion with the writings of many female authors of Indian origin. He thus
exposes the hidden agenda of the so-called "sisters from the colonial com-
munities, who are subtly trying to dilute Muslim women’s commitment to
their faith values.

Also included is David Perley’s “Vagueness: An Additional Nuance in
the Interpretation of Ibn ̀ Arabi’s Mystical Language.” Perley asserts that the
vagueness of Sufi terminology truly reflects the complexity of the metaphys-
ical phenomena themselves and that Sufi dictions and modes of expression
differ from those of analytic philosophers. The former is synthetic and expe-
riential in nature, whereas those of philosophers are analytical. 

Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui
Guest Editor

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