What can an accomplished Western theologian and philosopher offerto modern Islamic thought‘! Is there a need for the contemporary Muslimintelligentsia to learn from outside sources? And, if "a conscious and intellectualdefence must be made of the Islamic tradition,” does it mean that Muslimshave to live in a state of mental inertia vis-i-vis the impressive Western traditionin philosophy, theology, and other humanistic and social sciences? Finally,what are the intellectual dangers of borrowing from a Western heritage whichis diffuse in nature, and which is not free from ideology most of the time?Would we be accused of eclecticism and a lack of historicism?Undoubtedly, a major North African philosopher like Abdallah Laroui would dismiss the whole theological project of Islam and Christianity, oreven the whole theoretical enterprise of comparative religion, as irrelevant,ahistorical, anti-intellectual, nxluctionist, and obstructionist. The same attitudeis shared by not a small number of Arab and Muslim social scientists whoconsider metaphysics a fading religious pastime that should have been drivenaway from the human mental endeavor long before Kant appeared on thescene. This orientation is sociologically developed by Bassam Tibi in hisrecent book entitled The Crisis of Modem Islam: A Reindustrial Culturein the Scientific-Technological Age, where he argues that the only viableapproach to Islam in the modern wrld is the sociological method. Therefore,his aim is not to study the spiritual, philosophical, and social manifestationsof Islam in today‘s world, but to understand it, “as it is incorporated intoreality as a fait social-that is, a social fact.”Metaphysics and the Search for a Methodin Religious StudiesProkssor Huston Smith, who sees the validity of the argument that religionis a social fact, argues that the religious question is primarily metaphysical.Thus he offers a “synthetic construct” of religion: metaphysical and social.Put differently, Smith maintains that, transcendentally speaking, religion isa priori and universal; whereas socially spealung, religion is subject to diversityand particularism. It is when we understand his “synthetic argument” thatwe begin to unravel his conceptual concerns: Smith is troubled by the modernphilosophical assertion that truth is made and not found ...
Read full abstract
Dec 1, 1993
T Howland Sanks 
