EDITORIAL

Abstract

It is with a great sense of pride that we announce the quarterly publicationof the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences with this issue. We startedin 1984 with two issues a year, and in 1990 added a third. We are now gladto provide issues of AJISS corresponding to the four seasons of the year.We have been encouraged to increase our journal‘s frequency due to theoverwhelming response and appreciation of its uniqueness on the part ofindividual scholars, institutions, contributors, and subscribers. May Allahbless our well-wishers and help us to further enhance the scholarly role ofAJISS.In this issue, Amriah Buang introduces a hitherto neglected subject tothe Islamization of knowledge: human geography. Asserting that this fieldhas reached an epistemological impasse, she describes the nature of thecontending philosophies currently characterizing human geography and therebyhighlights those difficult-to-reconcile epistemological points of contention.Buang briefly recounts the nature of structuration theory, which is proposedby some geographers as a solution to the present impasse, and then subjectsit to a preliminary Islamic evaluation.In an earlier issue (AJISS 8:2, September 1991), Fazal Khan proposeda theoretical perspective on the process of the Islamization of the entertainmentvideo medium with special reference to Pakistan. In this issue, he exploressome empirical basics of the Islamization of the enculturation model basedon his study of youth viewers of Pakistani television.Theodore Wright, Jr., critiques the concepts and value assumptions ofexisting literature in the field of comparative politics in order to bring outthe built-in Eurocentric bias which it has acquired through its Judeo-Christianand secular-humanist orientation. He suggests a research agenda for Muslimand sympathetic non-Muslim specialists with the intent of recasting theperception of reality in terms which are objective and thus less biased thanthose currently found in the contemporary modern discourse of comparativeand developmental politics. Wright’s concerns are well appreciated and hisagenda should be taken seriously by Muslim researchers, but dependenceon empirical data alone is not going to solve the problem. Muslim socialscientists must participate in advancing Islamic positions on current issuesbased on the Qur’an, the hadith literature, and the insights gained from theirexpertise. For example, while an unbiased study of the preponderance of ...