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The Sacralization Of The Social Sciences: A Critique Of An Emerging Theme In Academic Discourse, Syed Farid Alatas

farid alatas

This paper critically evaluates the idea of "Islamic social science" in terms of its expression in Islamic economics and, more recently, in the Islamizatio of knowledge project. Islamic economics was conceived of in the 1930s while the beginnings of the Islamization of knowledge project can be traced to the 1970s. Islamic social science seeks to bring back religious experience and spirituality into knowledge by means of the sacralization of academic dis- course. The process of secularization in the West is seen to have rendered Muslim scholars incapable of comprehending the causes of the problems that beset Muslim society. The 1970s …