Toward Islamic Political Economy at the Turn of the Century

Abstract

Background and Some Explanatory TermsWith the distancing of Muslim societies from the pristine tawhidi(unity of God) origins of the Qur’an ingrained in the Madinah Charter(metareligious constitution of the earliest organized Islamic state)’ as theexperience of the Prophet Muhammad during his flight to the realm ofknowledge across the sidrat al rnuntaha (the tree/region of perfect knowledge,i.e., bliss), their constitutional strengths of life and thought decayedexponentially. This marked both the intolerance and the increasing severanceof the Muslim community from the roots of Qur’anic epistemology.Neither rationalism, scholasticism, nor controlled clerical dominance(fatwas) can be the methodology to replace the otherwise unifying epistemologyof tawhidi precept in all walks of life.Unification epistemology (also termed alternatively as tawhidi epistemologyand unity precept equivalent to Qur’anic epistemology) is theworldview that establishes life, thought, and their cognitive constituents inthe fold of a universally interactiveintegrative pervasion of inter- andintrasystemic relationships. In this fold, God-Man-Universe interrelationshipsare framed according to precise principles. These principles thenground the emergence of laws that remain integral with the unifying epistemology.The emergence and convergence of all processes in this frameworkare then seen to uphold cause-effect relationships with a uniquelyirreducible and logical presence of unity.The worldview of unification epistemology is premised in thismethodical deconstruction of all processes to the irreducible core thatfoundationally unifies all relationships and that is, in turn, reflected in theself-referential conclusions of all unified systems. What else can that irreducible,unified epistemological premise be but tawhid! While the ...