Talk:Islamization of knowledge
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Clearly this implies a few other articles, on Islamic economics, Islamic feminism, Islamic ecology, and the parallel Catholic views (not really a 'program') outlined by Pope John Paul II. The idea of having a 'Catholic' body of knowledge is actually very old, and goes back to the middle ages and Aquinas at least. Which is interesting because he probably got the idea from Arabs, who are now getting it back.
Given world events, this program is probably at least as important as all the anti-globalization movement talk, and we should have a good list of the intellectuals who support this program, and governments too if they do. Gadaffi in Libya has paid lip service to this idea, but firsthand experience of those who've tried to work on such a program under him suggest that it's insincere... big surprise! They also try to do this in Iran, sort of, and in Saudi there are programs of this nature of very limited non-government-threatening scope. Need to do more research...
Also, decided not to include the following paragraph, pending others' comments. It would go at the very end, but perhaps it should go in another article that could compare all the various attempts to subordinate science to ethics, likely called ethics in science and technology or ethics of knowledge itself.
- The increasing awareness of ethical arguments regarding human cloning, genetics, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and the possibility of a technological singularity that would put technology entirely beyond human control, are causing larger numbers of people who are both scientifically aware, and religious, to consider the limits of human action and control. When Clonaid announced the first human clone in 2003, Islamic clerics condemned it as strongly as Catholics or Jews - suggesting that there is increasing solidarity on the need for cooperation.
Added the following, as this is inherently a conservative Muslim enterprise and needs qualification to maintain NPOV: However, some liberal movements within Islam are skeptical of the approach, viewing the construction of fields such as Islamic science and Islamic economics largely as propaganda created to further the conservative view that Islam is an all-encompassing social system. --Zeeshanhasan 20:00, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think the usage of the word ethics (which apears frequently in the article) is in many cases inappropriate and suggests a strong bias towards Islamic Fundamentalism in a subtle way.I guess most people will agree that ethics are more or less general philosophical principles that ditinguish right and wrong in all fields of human actions.It is generally accepted that application of a particular code of ethics depeneds on cultural , economic , etc contexts within which the code of ethics is to be applied as well as personal judgment.So we should distinguish Islamic ethics(which is taken often to mean the code of ethics implicit in Islam) and Islamic Law ,the latter means eternal commands concerning particular actions and are to be applied exactly as they are.Islamic Fundamentalism essentially is a belief that identifies application of the Islamic ethics (which being ethics are all-encompassing) with Islamic Law and so attempts to extract Islamic laws concerning politics , economy etc making Islam an all-encompassing system which has an exact opinion about everything. Now for example look at this phrase : Al-Faruqi died in 1986, but his program has already had a profound effect, especially on Islamic economics, which operates under traditional zero-interest, participatory labor-capital structures, and supports stronger community control of land (as in the traditional practices of haram and hima, the equivalent of the modern watershed protection and wilderness reserve laws) , The zero-interst banking and Hima and Haram practices are obviousely parts of Islamic Law , but this term is never used in the article and is always replaced with Islamic ethics , for example in the opening lines.Replacing the terms Islamic Law or technical terms associated with it by ethics is both confusing and a support of those who identify Islamic Law with ethics ,it may be noteworthy that the process of infering Islamic laws , called ijtihad is not a philosophical argument based on ethics , but extracting presuposed to exist laws from texts by means of jurisprudence fiqh.In general I think Islamiztion , beside other things , is an attempt for providing basis for application of traditional terminology of Islamic jurisprudence to concepts developed in modern West , to make ineference of Islamic laws concerning modern affairs more accurate , its next step is to create an Islamic thinking by interpreting what does existing knowledge mean from an Islamic perpective.It's focus is not on ethics.Pasha Abd 22:18, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
