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Islam is seen as problematic today because of the actions of a few people armed with an aberrant ideology and the moral support or sympathy of a constituency of angry and disaffected Muslims in various parts of the world, often provoked by what they see as hypocritical policies and actions on the part of the world's powers. The problematic nature of Islam, however, was partly made possible by the centuries of conflict between Islam and the West. For the first few hundred years of its existence, Christianity was the only universal religion, both in theory and in practice. With the rise of Islam and its rapid spread beyond the Arabian peninsula to Christian lands in Palestine, North Africa and the Iberian peninsular, it must have come as a shock to Christendom that there was now a religion that could challenge it.

We argue that there is a need to rethink the teaching of classical sociological theories given our concern with the limitations of the received theoretical canon, and through our encounters with students of sociology who also persistently ask that the classics be shown to be meaningful and of contemporary relevance. In our teaching, we highlight Eurocentrism as an additional and essential context for understanding the rise of classical sociological theory, and to attune students in more meaningful ways to the works of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Ironically, such an approach constitutes a new form of legitimating the classics by revealing their timeless qualities, notwithstanding their Eurocen- trism.

This paper critically evaluates the idea of "Islamic social science" in terms of its expression in Islamic economics and, more recently, in the Islamizatio of knowledge project. Islamic economics was conceived of in the 1930s while the beginnings of the Islamization of knowledge project can be traced to the 1970s. Islamic social science seeks to bring back religious experience and spirituality into knowledge by means of the sacralization of academic dis- course. The process of secularization in the West is seen to have rendered Muslim scholars incapable of comprehending the causes of the problems that beset Muslim society. The 1970s also witnessed the call to the indigenization of the social sciences in the Third World as a result of dissatisfaction with what was per- ceived as irrelevant social scientific theories and methods and faulty para- digms of development. What "Islamic social science" and the call to indigenization have in common is the critique of modernist discourses of man and society, and the rejection of the universality of social scientific concepts that originated in the West.

The writings oflbn Khaldirn, particularly the Muqaddimah (Prolegomenon), have rightly been regarded as being sociological in nature. For this reason, Ibn Khaldun has been widely regarded as the founder of sociology, or at least a precursor of modem sociology. While he was given this recognition, however, few works went beyond proclaiming him as a founder or precursor to the systematic application of his theoretical perspective to specific historical and contemporary aspects of Muslim societies in North Africa and the Middle East. The continuing presence of Eurocentrism in the social sciences has not helped in this regard: it often stands in the way of the consideration of non-Western sources of theories and concepts. This book provides an overview of Ibn Khaldiin and his sociology, discusses reasons for his marginality, and suggests ways to bring Ibn Khaldtln into the mainstream through the systematic application of his theory. It moves beyond works that simply state that Ibn Khaldun was a founder of sociology or provide descriptive accounts of his works. Instead it systematically applies lbn Khaldiin's theoretical perspective to specific historical aspects of Muslim societies in North Africa and the Middle East, successfully integrating concepts and frameworks from Khaldunian sociology into modem social science theories. Applying Ibn Khaldiin will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology and social theory.

Ibn Khaldun was one of the most remarkable Muslim scholars of the pre-modern period. He founded an entirely new science that he called the science of human society (ciim ai-ijtimac ai-insan~ or human social organization (ciim al- cumran ai-bashan). It had little impact on the development of Muslim thought for several centuries but greatly impressed European thinkers from the nineteenth century on, some of whom regarded Ibn I

The fact that the humanities and social sciences in developing societies generally originated in the West has raised the issue of the relevance of these arts and sciences to the needs and problems of Third World societies. This questioning of relevance has led, in turn, to the call for the indigenisation of knowledge in developing societies. While there has been a great deal of discussion on indigenisation, there has been little practice of indigenised humanities and social science. As a result, there are few examples of what indigenous knowledge constitutes from theoretical, methodological and empirical points of view. This paper is directed towards arriving at some conception of what indigenised knowledge is, the various forms that it takes, and its rationale.

Madrasah education in Singapore has raised a number of issues and concerns, chief of which relate to the quality of such education and the impact that this education has on social cohesion. Because madrasah education presents itself as Islamic education, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by Islamic education in order to establish the criteria according to which madrasah education in Singapore may be assessed. This requires a brief introduction to thephilosophy of education in Islam and an understanding of the various institutions of learning in Islamic history that were founded on such a philosophy ofeducation, including the madrasah. This discussion concludes with some remarks on how madrasah education in Singapore can be founded on the theme of multiculturalism.

Economists have generally maintained a rigorous separation between positive and normative economics. In the Muslim world, however, concerted attempts have been made to relate moral conduct to economic institutions and practices. Demands for an alternative theory and practice of development to both modernization and Marxist theories had led to the rise of Islamic economics. But while Islamic economic thinking presents an ideal of development that is based on an Islamic philosophy of life, it is beset by a number of problems which make it difficult to be considered as an alternative to modernist discourse as far as empirical theory is concerned. As such. so-called Islamic economics cannot be considered as presenting a counter-modernist and alternative development theory. As an ethical theory of development Islam offers an alternative to modernization. dependency. and neo-Marxist theories. However.as an empirical theory. so called Islamic economic theory remains within the fold of Western modernist discourse in terms of its theoretical concerns and methodology. This chapter provides a theoretical critique and suggests an exemplar for a political economy approach for the Muslim world.

While there has been awareness of the problems of the relevance of Western concepts, theories and assumptions in critical works on the state of the social sciences in the Third World, what is meant as a conceptual level by relevance and irrelevance has rarely been the subject of discussion. The conceptualization of relevance is important because it lies at the basis of efforts to make the social sciences more relevant to conditions in the Third World. Nevertheless, the calls for greater relevance have generally been made in vague terms owing to the less than systematic manner in which "irrelevance" was discussed. The result was that calls for more relevant social sciences were equally unclear. This paper aims to advance our understanding of the problem of relevance by way of providing a preliminary conceptualization of relevance. &nbsp

In public discourse and formal education, human sciences need to facilitate the dialogue among civilizations to inculcate an attitude founded on appreciation, understanding, interest, and compassion for the cultures and worldviews of the other. All belief sys- tems are corruptible and can be perverted, and there are specific social and historical conditions that result in these perversions. Human sciences must go beyond merely correcting the fallacies and distortions of public discourse. They must attack the root of the problem, which is the problem of Eurocentrism in social science education that ulti- mately informs public discourse. The problem has to be dealt with at the level of knowl- edge production in teaching and research. This in turn would mean a greater need for interaction among scholarly communities in the various civilizations.

Always,Various types of meta-analyses exist, and concerns range from the epistemological to the empirical. Metatheory, or the reflexive study of the social sciences, involves the study of the social, cultural and historical contexts of theories and theorists, and their philosophical roots. The particular variety of meta theory that I focus on in this essay is the political economy of the social sciences, with reference to the cases of India and Malaysia.&nbsp

The recent emergence and current development of the Imami Shi'i school in Indonesia and Malaysia can only be understood against the backdrop of the early history of the Si 'ah, as well as that of the history of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian tor that binds these three historical processes together in a remarkable case of "conversion" within Islam is the 'olawiyyali sufi order (al-tariqah Archipelago. The common fac-al- 'alawiyyah). The tariqah al- 'alawiyyah is the path of the Siidat Bani 'alawiyyah. The Siidah al- 'alawiyyah (sing. sayyid), of the Shafi'i madhab (school of jurisprudence), originate from the Hadramawt, Yemen and played a major role in the Islamization of East Africa, Southern India, and the Malay- Indonesian Archipelago. The Sayyids of Hadramawt share a common his- tory with the Shi'i school and to some extent it is this commonality that caused Shi' i elements and tendencies among the descendants of Hadrami Siidat emigres in the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago to surface, particu- larly after the Iranian revolution of 1978. Today, the Hadrami Sayyids of the Malay-Indonesian world continue to playa role in the religious life of the region.

The question of the relationship between religion and other phcnome n · that come within its conceptual and semantic field, such as values, the one hand, and modern economic development, the other, occupied the minds of scholars since the last century.While the isswwas first dealt with theoretically and sociologically by lhn Khaldun in the fourteenth century AD, it was taken up again in systematic fashinn by European classical social theorists in the nineteenth century.&nbsp

If we understand history as a field constituted by a type of research and inquiry that concerns itself with human action in the past and is based on the interpretation of evidence, regardless of whether positivist or interpretive methods are used, then it can be said that historical works on Hadhramaut and its diaspora have been written. These works can be divided in broad terms into the two general categories of Arab and Western historiography. Nevertheless, in both cases, owing to certain theoret- ical problems that have beset these works, little progress has been made in the advancement of Hadhrami studies, particularly where the diaspora is concerned. Such theoretical problems include the lack of conceptualisation of Hadhrami emigration in terms of a "diaspora", and atheoretical approaches to the study of the history of Hadhrami political economy and society. The purpose of this chapter is to outline these theoretical problems and to suggest fresh approaches to the study of the history of Hadhramaut and its diaspora that are more theoretically self-conscious.

During the last twenty years or so, scholars in the Third World began to become critical of what came to be known as the captive mind. The captive mind is uncritical and imitative in its approach to ideas and concepts from the West.' Discussions on the problem of mental captivity coincided with efforts to indigenise the social sciences in the post-war period when most of the Third World gained formal independence.

In the study of the history of the Islamization of the Malay Archipelago (present-day Malaysia and Indonesia) various theories and points of view have been presented and the issue of objectivity arises in this context as clearly as in any writing of history. Mannheim's thesis that "the greatest comprehensiveness and the greatest fruitfulness in dealing with empirical materials" are the criteria to be applied in the choice between various interpretations' would seem to be relevant also in this case.

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.