The Fourth Congress of Muslim Librarians and Information Scientists

Abstract

This conference was a rare occasion for Muslim scientists and scholarsto assemble and discuss the challenges facing the ummah. Inauguratedby Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari, the president of Pakistan, the conferenceconsisted of fifty papers presented in eight inaugural and plenary sessions.The issues discussed were of both theoretical and practical import.The theoretical papers focused on such questions as the nature and significanceof science, the concept of Islamic science, and Islamic epistemology.According to Ziauddin Sardar, who gave the public lecture "IslamicScience: The Way Ahead," science is a highly complex and multilayeredactivity, for no single and simple description of science can reveal its truenature; no romantic ideal can describe its real character; no sweepinggeneralization can uncover its authentic dimensions. In particular,both the extreme positions of scientific fundamentalism andfundamentalist relativism are untenable.He stated that science has been under the influence of the dominantwestern paradigm and that the selection of research priorities is of fundamentalimportance in scientific research, for "often it is the source of fundingthat defines what problem is to be investigated.'' Some 80 percent ofAmerican research is funded by the "military-industrial complex" and isgeared to producing military and industrial equipment.As modem science is based on western values and the priority given toscientific investigation is determined by western requirements, sciencemust be indigenized. Muslim countries have a valuable and untapped reservoirof knowledge and experience. so such an indigenization would be likea rediscovery. But this process, Sardar maintains, "must begin by a rejectionof both the axioms about nature, universe, time, and humanity as wella5 the goals and direction of western science and the methodology whichhac; made meaningless reductionism, objectification of nature, and tortureof animals its basic approach." By Islamic science he means a scientificactivity pursued within the framework of a set of fundamental Islamic concepts.Sardar supports the concepts, identified by Muslim scientists at theStockholm Seminar (1981), that should shape the science policies ofMuslim societies: tawhid (unity), khilafah (trusteeship), 'ibadah (worship) ...