Talk:Islamization of knowledge

Clearly this implies...
Clearly this implies a few other articles, on Islamic economics, Islamic feminism, Islamic ecology, and the parallel Catholic views (not really a 'program') outlined by Pope John Paul II. The idea of having a 'Catholic' body of knowledge is actually very old, and goes back to the middle ages and Aquinas at least. Which is interesting because he probably got the idea from Arabs, who are now getting it back.

Given world events, this program is probably at least as important as all the anti-globalization movement talk, and we should have a good list of the intellectuals who support this program, and governments too if they do. Gadaffi in Libya has paid lip service to this idea, but firsthand experience of those who've tried to work on such a program under him suggest that it's insincere... big surprise! They also try to do this in Iran, sort of, and in Saudi there are programs of this nature of very limited non-government-threatening scope. Need to do more research...

Also, decided not to include the following paragraph, pending others' comments. It would go at the very end, but perhaps it should go in another article that could compare all the various attempts to subordinate science to ethics, likely called ethics in science and technology or ethics of knowledge itself.


 * The increasing awareness of ethical arguments regarding human cloning, genetics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and the possibility of a technological singularity that would put technology entirely beyond human control, are causing larger numbers of people who are both scientifically aware, and religious, to consider the limits of human action and control. When Clonaid announced the first human clone in 2003, Islamic clerics condemned it as strongly as Catholics or Jews - suggesting that there is increasing solidarity on the need for cooperation.

Added the following, as this is inherently a conservative Muslim enterprise and needs qualification to maintain NPOV: However, some liberal movements within Islam are skeptical of the approach, viewing the construction of fields such as Islamic science and Islamic economics largely as propaganda created to further the conservative view that Islam is an all-encompassing social system. --Zeeshanhasan 20:00, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think the usage of the word ethics (which apears frequently in the article) is in many cases inappropriate and suggests a strong bias towards Islamic Fundamentalism in a subtle way.I guess most people will agree that ethics are more or less general philosophical principles that ditinguish right and wrong in all fields of human actions.It is generally accepted that application of a particular code of ethics depeneds on cultural, economic , etc contexts within which the code of ethics is to be applied as well as personal judgment.So we should distinguish Islamic ethics(which is taken often to mean the code of ethics implicit in Islam) and Islamic Law ,the latter means eternal commands concerning particular actions and are to be applied exactly as they are.Islamic Fundamentalism essentially is a belief that identifies application of the Islamic ethics (which being ethics are all-encompassing) with Islamic Law and so attempts to extract Islamic laws concerning politics , economy etc making Islam an all-encompassing system which has an exact opinion about everything. Now for example look at this phrase : Al-Faruqi died in 1986, but his program has already had a profound effect, especially on Islamic economics, which operates under traditional zero-interest, participatory labor-capital structures, and supports stronger community control of land (as in the traditional practices of haram and hima, the equivalent of the modern watershed protection and wilderness reserve laws), The zero-interst banking and Hima and Haram practices are obviousely parts of Islamic Law , but this term is never used in the article and is always replaced with Islamic ethics , for example in the opening lines.Replacing the terms Islamic Law or technical terms associated with it by ethics is both confusing and a support of those who identify Islamic Law with ethics ,it may be noteworthy that the process of infering Islamic laws , called ijtihad is not a philosophical argument based on ethics , but extracting presuposed to exist laws from texts by means of jurisprudence fiqh.In general I think Islamiztion , beside other things , is an attempt for providing basis for application of traditional terminology of Islamic jurisprudence to concepts developed in modern West , to make ineference of Islamic laws concerning modern affairs more accurate , its next step is to create an Islamic thinking by interpreting what does existing knowledge mean from an Islamic perpective.It's focus is not on ethics.Pasha Abd 22:18, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Islamization of History
It seems that when a country becomes Islamic - then its history become Islamized.

For example - the history of North Africa is virtually wiped from these people's minds as they only identify with being Arab [which is more of a status symbol that calling oneself, Berber, which the CIA Fact book says that 99.9% of North Africans are.]

For these North Africans all history leads to Arabia. When it is true that North Africa was very important part of the Roman Empire. But with the Islamization of history the North African, has almost forgotten that he existed before the 7th century. Before, by the way, the Syrians took over North Africa and Spain, and not the Arabs. And in addition only ruled over Morocco/Algeria for a maximum of 150 years, where they/ now known as the Moors ruled Spain for far longer, yet the Spanish, proudly do not refer to themselves as Arabs. Once power was transferred or taken back into the hands of the North Africans, many left Spain for North Africa, leaving their Syrian overlords to continue to rule over the Spanish peninsula or al-Andalusia in the end.

Within the Islamic world these kinds of misinformation or beliefs are shared and then reinforced, but outside of the Islamic world this, Islamized version of knowledge can leave the person looking, ignorant of one's own history and even embarrassed by the lack of knowledge.

We can see the Islamization of history process in action today, in the newly formed country of Pakistan, there was an argument about a year ago on whether Pakistani school children should be taught the history of the region, before the event of Islam. The discussion which had reached parliament, ended one day with the storming out of at least one faction, who was claiming that they know where their history comes from and that was Arabia.

Islamization of history seems to be a method of securing one's ties with Arabia, the birth place of the Prophet Muhammad, in spite of one's actual history or origin. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.196.242.105 (talk) 17:26, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

This article needs a complete overhaul from top to bottom
Crud, what a mess. This is written like somebody's blog post. I tried to remove phrases that were of a highly reflective, personal nature, but this really isn't an article; it's an essay. I'm not sure if it can be salvaged via edits or if it just needs to be completely rewritten. Drastic action is needed, however. MezzoMezzo (talk) 04:07, 14 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Or maybe it just needs to be deleted. Not a single source is cited.VR talk 11:20, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Relying on my studies, I can say that there can be no question as to the notability of the subject. But it mostly contains original research. Some of its claims are even attributed to living persons. Is it a joke or what? How can those unsourced statements attributed to those individuals sustain for so long on an encyclopedia having specific guidelines against it? It goes on to say for example, "Nasr's work on the congruence between classical Islam and the modern ecology movement is thought by some to be even more fundamental, and to suggest parallels between the ethical constraints that secular activists seek to place on science and technology, and the ethical constraints that Islam sought to place on philosophy and politics." Now what does it really mean? Whose thought it really is? It also says many other things about Al Faruqi as well. But we all know that the guy is dead. But Nasr is still alive for god's sake. And so is Attas. I myself had removed this sentence in the past for not citing any source. And lo! it is still there. Without of course any source backing it up. I am not of course in any way telling that other parts are without problems. But I think that the portions that concern living individuals are in need of immediate action. Mosesheron (talk) 17:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I've removed the unsourced content, and now the article is a stub. If new sources or content are not presented I'll redirect the article to Islamic philosophy, which was suggested at Articles for deletion/Islamization of knowledge. VR talk 18:56, 9 December 2021 (UTC)