Editoral

Abstract

This issue of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences completesthe Symposium on Political Governance, begun by Muhammad Salahuddin’sijtihiid in the last issue. The lead article in this issue is a summary of Islamicpolitical principles by Hasan Turabi, long-time head of the MuslimBrotherhood in The Sudan.Following this is an article by Sister Mona Abul Fadl, a ResearchAssociate at the International Institute of Islamic Thought, taken from hernew book, Alternative Perspective: Introducing Islam From Within, to bepublished by the World Muslim League in Makkah. She explores the coreIslamic concepts of community, justice, and jihad, and concludes that theclimax of Islamization is Istish had or martyrdom in submission to Allah.In the third article of the symposium, Fadel Abdallah uses ‘ijtihad to explorethe textual and historical evidence showing both the absolute condemnationof slavery in Islam and Islam’s use of an indirect strategy to abolish itwithout unduly risking the destruction of the Muslim Ummah. This mayhighlight the symposium’s introductory suggestion by Muhammad Salahuddinthat, within limits, even in extreme cases, balance and patience can be virtues.The second section of this issue presents two papers comparing theIslamization of knowledge with the process of building a new paradigm ofthought and reality, which process many historians now believe is the precursorof all great advances in human knowledge and culture. The concept ofparadigms is simply explained in the second article by Hasan Langgulung asapplied to revolutionary change in the discipline of psychology. In the first article,Muhammad ‘Arif discusses the scholarly battle of the past two decadeson the nature of paradigms. He concludes that, whatever criteria one uses, theIslamization of Knowledge as proposed by Shaheed Isma’il Faruqi introducesa true paradigmatic revolution in human history, compamble to the revolutionthat destroyed the decadent world of 1400 years ago when the originalparadigm of Tawhid was revealed in Qur’an al karim.The Research Notes contain a scholarly piece by Professor Theodore P.Wright, Jr., identifying ten ways in which Jews as a group have influenced thedevelopment of thought and action in America and ten characteristics that explainwhy Jews have been able to exert this influence and Muslims have not.The concluding research note, The Shari‘ah and its Implications forIslamic Financial Analysis: An Opportunity to Study Interactions Among ...