REFLECTIONS ON THE IDEA OF ISLAMIC SOCIAL SCIENCE

Abstract

When we refer to Islamic social science what do we mean? In what ways can the social sciences be Islamic? There are two such ways. One involves approaching specifically Muslim problems, that is, problems found in Muslim society, in a social scientific manner. An example would be the issue of the relationship between religion and the state. Concepts developed in Western social science would be modified and applied to achieve this aim. The other way in which social science can be Islamic goes beyond the former and involves the idea that social scientific theories, concepts and methodologies can be derived from the history and thought of Islam in order that these social sciences may be based on the Islamic Weltanschauung. The Islamic social sciences should not be confined to the tackling of just Muslim society but are to be extended to the interpretation of the whole world from an Islamic point of view. They are, therefore, juxtaposed to the Western social sciences which involve the interpretation of not only Western civilization but non-Western civilizations as well. What does it mean to say that the writing of history or the social sciences are to be based on a particular Weltanschauung or point of view whether this is Islamic, European, Malay or Asian? In the field of Southeast Asian history something of a debate on this issue took place during the 1960s. Two extremes are discernible in the debate. Bastin gave an extremely dismal picture of the possibility of writing Southeast Asian history from the Southeast Asian point of view.