EDITORIAL

Abstract

With this fourth issue of 1993, we have completed ten years of publishingthe American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (MISS). Westarted our journey in 1984 with two issues published during the yearunder the title of American Journal of Islamic Studies. The next year itwas transformed into the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences(AJISS). The first decade has been quite a pioneering experience, and bynow we have been able to identify a growing pool of thinkers, writers,and social scientists who are participating in our endeavor to promote ascholarly forum on Islam.In this issue, Rosalind W. Gwynne's paper is part of a continuing discussionon sunnah. She demonstrates that, in Islamic texts, sunnah doesnot refer only to the Sunnah of the Prophet, of the local community, orof the Companions and the early community; it can refer to the "SunnatAll&" (the practice of God). She reviews the occurrence of the wordsunnah in the Qur'an and, by analyzing some tafair and early documents,shows that it also refers to the universal and unchanghg rules thatAllah has established and set into motion. She quotes Wensinck's Concordanceof Hadith, in which sunnah has been used in the context of"Sunnat Alliih alongside with "Sunnat a1 Nabi" and sunnah in othersenses. Social scientists must concentrate on the "Sunnat AllW in orderto understand the universal laws of Allah that govern social phenomena.Louay Safi provides a methodological approach that recognizes revelationas a primary source of knowledge and seeks to use both text andaction analysis techniques as necessary theory-building tools. He arguesthat scientific activity presupposes metaphysical knowledge and that, furthermore,it is even impossible without transcendental ptesuppositions. Healso contends that revelation's truth is rooted in empirical reality and thatthe quality of evidence supporting revealed truth is of no less caliber thanthat justifying empirical truth.Ebtihaj Al-A'ali presented her paper on "Assumptions Concerning theSocial Sciences: A Comparative Perspective" at a recent Toronto, Canada,confemce dealing with cross-cultural knowledge. She summarizes briefly ...