This essay argues that Islam should be understood through the lens of social science, not through the limited view of theology. The dynamics, interplays, and nuances of human society are best explicated by the various branches of social science (and by no other scholarship of knowledge); therefore, a social scientific approach will provide a deeper and more accurate understanding of Islam, particularly concerning its potential to serve society.
- Then do they not [tadabbur] study, reflect upon the Qur’an, or are there locks upon [their] hearts? (47:24)
- The worst creatures in God’s eyes are those who are [willfully] deaf and dumb, who do not reason, who don’t use [aakl] intelligence and wisdom (8:22).
- Why will you not [fakara] reflect, think, obtain a clear knowledge, examine, and employ the mind (6:50)
- Do not follow blindly what you do not know to be true or you don’t have any knowledge about that (by means of ears, eyes and hearts) [true means knowledge and vice versa]: indeed you will be questioned about all these — ears (the hearing), eyes (the seeing), and heart (understanding, mind) (17:36).
Note: In the above venn diagram, I have tried to show how I see the differences and commonalities between the hadis-based Islam and the Islam envisioned in Quran. I found this to be the number 1 problem of the Ummah and we need to fix it first before all of other issues.
To the end, this essay seeks to investigate the question why the scholars of Muslim Ummah should shift their focus from hadith-based interpretation of Quran to a social-science-based interpretation of Quran to pursue the Quranic mission of bringing people from darkness to enlightenment. Using normative approach with a reference to Quran and applying the grounded theory method, this paper attempts to explore the answer/s to the question. This academic investigation will build upon several other questions such as why ‘religion Islam’ (as opposed to ‘Islam’ only) appears to slowly part from practical, rational everyday life, pushing the human being to develop and accept secularism as “a whole way of life” replacing Islam; whether Quran has appeared successful to bring people from darkness to enlightenment which is a kind of the mission statement of Quran; how far the existing literature or the scholarship of Islam is suitable to pursue the Quranic mission of bringing people from darkness to enlightenment; how far the existing literature or the scholarship of Islam is being able to withstand the epistemological challenges from the world of secularism; and how far the scholarship of Islam has been able to provide the answer to all questions of the mankind.
Powers are exercised in various forms in various groups/strata in a society. Among them, the biggest power is the power of knowledge as argued by social scientists, such as Foucault. Foucault argues that power of domination comes through knowledge (McCoy, 1988). The western civilization is today reigning supreme apparently by its “power of knowledge.” As the issues of the Ummah are primarily pertained to the public sphere as opposed to the individual sphere, supremacy in knowledge in the public sphere is the only weapon or tool that the Ummah can exploit for both withstanding extra- and intra-Ummah challenges. Drawing on the widespread phenomena in the public sphere manifested in various forms such as in education and in socio-cultural-political practices in particular, this paper considers secularism — more specifically secularism as a paradigm or secularism as the epistemic underpinning in knowledge-practice — as the most crucial challenge that the Ummah, and the mankind as a whole, is facing today. Secularism as the underlying epistemological premise of today’s worldview is inbuilt in our societies from East to West. Let alone the children of non-Muslims, our own children from East to West knowingly or unknowingly are being indoctrinated into various secular ideas such as Marxism, individualism, feminism, and LGBTQ, if not into secularism and/or atheism directly, thanks to secularism’s being the epistemological underpinning of their education — all sorts of education, both formal and informal. Whatever they learn from the environment (schools, homes, shops, online platforms, etc) what Bourdieu (1930–2002) called as habitus.
Islam is a set of creator-fixed lifestyle guidelines or the charter for the mankind as claimed by Quran. However, this idea is not well-stressed and well-explained in the majority scholarship of Islam. Islam is a “rational faith” as opposed to a conventional religion like Christianity and Hinduism, but unfortunately it is presented before the nation as a conventional faith like Christianity and Hinduism. It’s rather studied as merely a “religion for Muslims” or as a “pure faith.” As per the canonical text — Quran, Islam requires the human being to accept, witness, and establish ‘creator Allah’s’ sovereignty at all times in every sphere of the very practical life of human being. While one of the key claims that Islam makes, as per the canonical text, is that having Allah’s existence is the most discernible thing and thus the rational idea to believe, Islam has been studied only as a ‘pure belief’ in traditional Islamic literature. This gap, I think, is making ‘religion Islam’ part slowly from practical, rational everyday life, pushing the human being to develop and accept secularism as “a whole way of life” or in other words “culture” as defined by Raymond Williams when the canonical text warrants the humans to make Islam their culture or the whole way of life. We often claim that Islam has the solution to all human problems, but we failed to show those solutions in practical terms, in the knowledge-practice as well as in the scholarship of Islam. This is very apparent that the Ummah has failed to withstand the underlying yet prevalent secular epistemological premise of today’s knowledge-practice although we have the “absolute knowledge” (as opposed to perspectival knowledge or anthropological knowledge), i.e. Quran, in our hands. The very epistemic assumption of our understanding of Islam appears to be that Islam is purely a set of beliefs or faiths, which means Islam is irrational, unrealistic, and thus impractical in our everyday life. We don’t discuss or project Islam from the perspective of general knowledge or common knowledge.
Quran claims itself to be the charter for the mankind, not a religious scripture for the Muslims only and the very purpose of Islam is to guide the humanity, not the Muslims only, towards enlightenment from darkness(es). If Quran is the solution to all human problems, Quran should have answers to all human problems and questions, which means that the scholarship of Islam should have the answers to every question from the mankind from the Quranic perspective. In other words, Quran verses should be explicated in such way which would have answers to all of the questions of the time for the mankind, going beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries. And that is not possible if Quran is explicated building upon only the context of 1400 years ago, i.e. the contexts from hadiths. If Quran is the last message from our creator for the mankind, then it must be applicable for all human communication issues, problems and questions until the day of judgement for all the communities of the mankind, which suggests that Quran should have the solution to the human problems and questions stemmed from the latest human inventions such as artificial intelligence. So, Quran should be the brand new message from Allah SWT, for every day, for every community of people around the globe. Quran should be above the limitations stemmed from the spatial and temporal boundaries, so Quranic explication should not be limited by spatial and temporal contexts and/or constraints what we do using hadith-based interpretation of Quran.
Each and every account of Allah’s rasul work, let alone Allah’s rasul’s statement, is contested even within the scholarship of Hadith. As Hadiths are anthropological knowledge, it’s bound to be polluted by human intervention, error, and limitations. This is true like “the sun rises in the East” that it’s humanly impossible to get the “verbatim account” of Allah’s Rasul’s work and speech. Should the “verbatim account” of Allah’s Rasul’s work and speech be required for the mankind, Allah SWT, this paper argues, would make an arrangement for that. Allah SWT would, maybe, then enable the humans to invent technology like YouTube at the time of Allah’s Rasul or Allah SWT would send His Rasul Muhammad (SW) at a time when this kind of technology is already there, so that each and every work and speeches of Allah’s Rasul could be video-recorded so that there remains no confusion amongst the mankind about the message from Allah SWT.
Isn’t it the biggest julum on Allah SWT and His Rasul (SW) when we refer to something — which is very much contested, debated, doubted and which we are totally unsure about how Allah’s rasul said those and under which context — as Allah’s rasul statements and work? None of the human’s seeing, observation, and learning is absolute. This is the human limitation. While Allah’s seeing and observation is absolute, what the humans see is not absolute, what the humans observe is not absolute, which means, what the humans see is only one of many perspectives and what the humans observe is only one of many perspectives. So, it is natural that the humans cannot reproduce the “pure intended message” of what he sees others doing or he observes others doing. We have Quran in our hands, which is very real in front of us. We have the Quran verses written, but still we are decoding different messages out of the same verses, depending on who are interpreting, how and when. Allah’s rasul’s work and speeches was either observed or heard, so this observation and listening and thus reproducing verbatim is humanly impossible. [There are thousands more reasons behind why we don’t have the verbatim account of Allah’s Rasul work and speeches. I will shed light on this in details in the full paper].
However, we must keep the basic structure of the life of our prophet, particularly his major socio-political communication where there is no confusion such as his being the head of state, his struggle throughout the life, his marriage, and his praying, in our consideration while explicating the Quran as it’s not possible to build a human society what Allah SWT envisioned in Quran without knowing the basic structure of Allah’s Rasul’s socio-political life.
On the hand, the Quran is for all members of the mankind and that’s why it does not make sense that it should require any special knowledge to comprehend its message. And if it were required at all, wasn’t it Allah SWT’s responsibility to tell the humans that: “Okay, you need to read Imam Bukhari’s hadiths” to understand the message of Quran? Allah SWT didn’t even mention that the humans need special knowledge such as deep understanding of hadiths to comprehend the Quranic message. Quran should be easily comprehended by each and every member of the mankind, without any special or additional effort and exactly that is what Allah SWT mentioned in the Quran several times as Allah says in the verse 89 of Sura Bani-Israel: “We have explained things for people in this Qur’an in diverse ways, in details to make them understand the Message.” Hadith is the historical knowledge and thus is a special knowledge. Let’s ponder over the question whether a person, who comprehended the Quranic message in light of the common sensical human knowledge and followed Islam accordingly without paying any heed to so-called hadiths, will be interrogated by Allah SWT on the Day of Judgment for not following hadiths! Let us rephrase the question: Will it be fair for Allah SWT to interrogate somebody on the Day of Judgment if he or she does not consult special knowledge like Hadiths for understanding Quran?
Quran, as it itself claims to be, the charter for mankind (Al-Imran, 138). It is the naturally-endowed guideline for the human communication or the “natural social contract” something what philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was looking for, for the mankind as he was of the opinion that the human society needs a “natural social contract” as opposed to man-made social contract. Although the very message — the Quran — is extra-terrestrial, this extra-terrestrial message is for serving a terrestrial purpose, i.e. it came as a charter for the terrestrial being — the humans. So this message should be explained only in terrestrial dynamics — as opposed to any extra-terrestrial dynamics. On the other hand, the humans are not endowed with the capacity of going beyond their terrestrial intelligence, so they can in no way grasp any message beyond the terrestrial boundary and Allah SWT has asked the humans not to try that as well (Allah’s warning about Mutashibihat verses). And it does not make sense that Allah SWT would order/send the humans anything extra-terrestrial (dynamics) which the humans cannot grasp of by their terrestrial intelligence. In other words, it makes more sense that Allah SWT would send the humans such thing which the humans can understand and explicate very easily and that’s what Allah SWT asserted time and again in Quran.
As this is the extra-terrestrial message which came from the Creator of us and the universe as the charter for the mankind, the humans should employ its “the most perfect knowledge” to unpack the meaning/s of the Quran, or decode the Quranic message; the humans should employ all of its tools of knowledge whatsoever they have developed over the centuries to figure out exactly what is the Allah’s intended message in the Quran, what is the Allah’s intended meaning of each of the words. We need to strive to figure out exactly what Allah SWT wants us to understand by each of the words, sentences and finally the Quran as a whole.
When it needs to show the mankind as to how the Quranic solutions fit every dynamics and interplays of the human communication for ever until the day of Qiyamah, it is an imperative to know the dynamics and interplays of the setting of the human society, for which we are proposing our solutions. Explaining scriptures without knowing and/or understanding the very intricate, complex, dynamic, fluid, discursive nature of the human communication is something like writing prescription without diagnosing diseases of a person.
Social science is the study of how people interact with one another in a social setting, particularly in public sphere. For years, the various branches of the social science, through a process of trial and error, have developed various means and ways for unpacking the nuances of the human communication dynamics. That means, the social science unpacks the meaning-making and meaning-creating processes in the human communication and its various dynamics. It explores how the meanings are encoded and decoded. In other words, the purpose of the social science is to explore the intended meanings of a text (i.e. words, sentences, essays, photographs, videos or any objects/pieces valued with message) and also to explore how the meanings of a text is decoded/constructed differently, depending when, where and who is unpacking and/or constructing the meaning, which means the decoding of meaning is very subjective and sometimes the decoding process fail to unpack the intended meaning of the text. That’s why many social science scholars argue that meaning of a text (text doesn’t necessarily mean only the words/sentences) is largely a social construction having a little link with the text. Social science scholars such as Derrida, Baudrillard, Lacan, Saussure, and Stuart Hall have widely-accepted arguments on this thing.
By the social science based explanation, this paper refers to a process of explication which will consider all the possible meanings of a text that the humans have developed so far. This process includes literal, metaphorical and underlying meanings of a text — a Quranic sentence or words in this case, until or unless any meaning or some meanings of the text is negated by another verse of the Quran. For example, Allah SWT, while talking about the purpose of sending down the Quran, said in various place of Quran:
الٓر ۚ كِتَـٰبٌ أَنزَلْنَـٰهُ إِلَيْكَ لِتُخْرِجَ ٱلنَّاسَ مِنَ ٱلظُّلُمَـٰتِ إِلَى ٱلنُّورِ
Which means, the Quran has been sent down so that the humans can be taken out of darkness(es) to the light. Almost all of the tafsirs refer to “the light” as the “faith of Islam” here. Ibn Kathir used the word “enlightenment of faith,” which doesn’t make sense at all. This is an oxymoron. Sheer faith can never be enlightenment. There are various faiths namely Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and so on. The question is: Which faith should I keep faith in? On the other hand, what is darkness(es) and the light (or enlightenment) in the eyes of humans (as this Quranic message is for the humans). Why are they called darkness(es) and the light? What knowledge have the humans developed so far on these ideas or terms or notions and how are those things/ideas related/connected with the Quranic expression? Exactly what has Allah SWT wanted us to understand these two terms? The social-science-based explication of this verse of the Quran would include the answers to these questions.
Maybe, it is only Maulana Maududi who has referred to the term “Kitabum-Munir” as “the book of enlightenment,” and brought the Kantian idea of enlightenment into this Quranic discourse as he writes: “The main point of the Enlightenment — the idea that, in Immanuel Kant’s famous definition, modern, enlightened people would “dare to know.” Allah SWT also said in verse 20of Sura Jasiah:
هٰذَا بَصَاٮِٕرُ لِلنَّاسِ
which means, this is enlightenment for the mankind. The very process of enlightenment or “dare-to-know” is for all practical purposes a social science inquiry or a social science study.
Social science explains all possible means the humans can communicate in their life, while Quran is the charter for the mankind or the natural social contract for the mankind. So, it’s urgent to understand the entire dynamics of human communication (which is explicated in various social disciplines by hundreds of scholars throughout the human history), before trying to understand the Quran. The social science scholars (secular though) have deeply deliberated about the human crises and problems over the years and tried to fix them and tried to give solutions to those problems, but to no avail because they did not take insights from the absolute knowledge (knowledge from the Creator, i.e. Quran). On the other hand, the conventional explanation has been made only from the scripture, without contextualizing it with the human knowledge. That’s why, most of their interpretations do not make sense in everyday human life.
No book in the world gives the humans such a definitive guideline for every aspect of the human life and society, so it is clearly and essentially a book of social science, in all aspects and Islam is a political philosophy without any doubt. In fact, it is the greatest book of social science. So, without having sufficient knowledge of social science including in philosophy, we cannot get the Quran/Allah’s message in its entirety, properly. In other words, without knowledge of social science, we will get either “partial message” or “faulty message” from the Quran/Creator/Allah. And most of the things in all conventional explanations of Islam do not make sense in the eyes of social science as well as in the eyes of our everyday life. Then, the question is why should the humans follow the religion or the religious practice/s that do/does not make sense in everyday/materialistic life? Why? Why should I keep faith in Islam? Why not in Christianity? Why various aspect of Islam is being questioned in western knowledge or various branches of knowledge. It’s because we could not explicate/articulate the message of Allah SWT properly in line with the everyday life. We could not make sense of Quranic way of life in all of the branches of knowledge. That’s the failure of the extant Islamic scholarship.
Abu Taib Ahmed 
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