Mapping the Islamic Discourse on Knowledge: The Relevance of the New Islamic Discourse

Abstract: In the aftermath of independence, the ex-colonized Muslim countries were caught up in a comprehensive process of Westernization of Muslim life and thought. In this context, fundamental questions have been raised: What is the vision of knowledge? What is the position of the existing traditional Islamic and modern Western knowledge? This study aims to map existing trends in the interpretation of knowledge and measure the relevance of what Elmessiri calls the “New Islamic Discourse”. Descriptive, analytical, and comparative methods are used in the entire study. The first major finding is that there are seven Islamic discourses according to how they respond to critical questions. The second major finding is that the relevance of the “New Islamic Discourse” is based on five main features namely, (1) Modern science is not neutral, (2) Secularization of life and knowledge is part of the Modern crisis, (3) Islamic view of knowledge is neither modernist nor traditionalist, (4) Islamic view of knowledge is neither positivist nor relativist, and (5) Islam is a worldview that has implications for life and knowledge (on epistemology and methodology).