Thursday 19 April 2007

Should Western contemporary sciences be Islamized?

Islamization—mainly in the field of knowledge and sciences—sounds a bit strange, and for some it reflects fundamentality of those who uphold it. To me it deserves to be considered as an implication of Islam itself, for Islam is a religion governing all aspects of human being, including knowledge and science. Furthermore the first verses revealed to Prophet Muhammad—upon whom be peace God’s blessing—are concerning of reading, which is may be understood that the first and most important duty in Islam is to read, means to attain knowledge in the way governed by God’s guide as it is implied in those verses.

To talk about islamization of knowledge is to talk something in middle term. For it is between islamization of language by which it is begun and islamization of mind and thought of which it is end.

It is important to talk about the topic which is—at least in some Muslim scholar point of view—the core of problems being faced by Muslim society. The problem argued to be the core is problem of knowledge, that is, (1) misunderstanding of knowledge and science as projected in Islamic worldview, caused by (2) considering modern sciences as something free-value, which, in fact, it is not; therefore (3) Muslims need to Islamize modern and so-called Western sciences by Islamizing of their linguistic symbols of reality and truth.

The first of these, as explained by Al-Attas, is the most serious problems amongst Muslim brought about by ignorance and confusion. From this standpoint, the economic, social, and, political problems are merely derivative problems which are for some scholars look the most fundamental.

Such ignorance and confusion produced by misadopting happen as result of Muslims’ being unduly influenced by Western civilization.

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