The following is a draft due for revising: We'd like to share it with you as is,  since it foregrounds and sums up a larger work posted below in our ABDIN FORUM:  In the meantime,  credit is due a dear friend, student, and colleague, for meticulously going through the original and condensing it thus - in a manner that literally retains the spirit and the letter of the piece...Thank you, Jerusha -  I only wish you could have carried through the original intent of seeing it to the printer's press!!  To view the original, follow this link  for a shorter version, and for a more complete version you may visit here. Both are saved in PDF format.  MAF.

Overcoming the Civilizational Impasse :

Towards Rethinking Culture, Renewing the Academy

 OVERVIEW 

This paper serves as an overview of a body of work that goes back to the '80's, and which postulates and explores a comparative, analytical approach to the understanding of culturally/ historically derived epistemes. In doing so, it aims to uncover, and recover, a potential force for global cultural renewal which is found in a theocentric humanist worldview,  qualifying as a median culture-type, and epitomized in the Islamic paradigm of knowledge.  The synopsis that follows also sheds light on an evolving Muslim contribution to discourses on modernity and social theory that are destined to ground an intercivilizational encounter - discourses currently shaping in academia and cultural circles throughout the Muslim world and beyond -  ideologies and power-politics notwithstanding!!  (M.A.F.)
 

Plight of Modernity

Modernity has brought with it a crisis of values that has undermined its own foundations and is provoking a universalized state of existential angst or anomie and moral anarchy. This is partly what post-modernity is about. The crisis of values that modernity entails did not happen overnight, but it took centuries to materialize: the centuries that spanned all the great intellectual and cultural epochs from the European Renaissance through Reformation and Enlightenment. We specify "European" because modernity has been largely the expression and the product of a European cultural force and because what has been acted out as world history since the eighteenth century has in fact been European history. 

This specifically West European project began when the foundations of knowledge were subverted and derailed by an insidious alliance with power and a progressive distancing from values. The fact-value dichotomy that sealed the triumph of positivism was only the last step in a chain of evolution whose momentum and direction were determined from the first moments modernity was launched as a historical as much as a historicist project. Medieval scholasticism may have unwittingly laid the foundations for the rationality that would make this project possible, but the very schizomorphic and binary cognitive and psychic structures that anticipated the project of modernity and precipitated its evolution, were already embedded in the pre-modern European mind. 

The truly radical transformation that has occurred in the modern world has occurred at the structural level and has been brought about by technology which represents the triumph of instrumental reason. The current defense of modernity at the ideological level articulated by such dynamic and prolific intellects as Jurgen Habermas, constitutes an eleventh hour endeavor to save it from both its aridity and excess. This is sought in the efforts to rehabilitate and reconcile the hitherto neglected dimensions of human experience and to appropriate them at the effective levels of human consciousness and social organization.[MAF1]  The missing human dimensions are primarily analyzed into the elements of theoretical and practical reason, and illusions of self-sufficiency and the autonomy of human reason are merely preserved and perpetuated. According to the positivist canon, human reason was celebrated as the ultimate creator, regulator, legislator, and arbiter of human values. If this was a position that might have been justified at the end of the nineteenth century, the experience of the decades that have elapsed since then should have taught us better. Where there was room for confident optimism and speculative leaps, the skepticism which has ensued since should have made us think twice: not so as to push us into the other extremes of cynicism, nihilism and the absurd, or to force us to abandon and denounce the accomplishments of the modern age. Rather, it should have opened us to a more considered and realistic assessment of the foundations of our modern rationality and its attendant morality. 

The moment the scientific method was perverted into a doctrine of social salvation ("progress"), reason and the senses were perverted, and the destination was lost. Philosophy and science are means or accesses to knowledge which originate with man and are at his disposal to be used in the light of his understanding of his purpose or his goals in life. Philosophy is the way of reason to the truth and science is its pursuit and application to this world. The moment they become objects for man's adoration, philosophia or scientia perennis, and scientism, and the moment they assume different incarnations of the Golden Calf, then man stumbles and slips. Autonomous human reason, its instruments and its products, all become substitutes for religion and morality in certain cases as when we refer to ideologies, or they become sources for such secular or civil religions in others, as when the belief in constitutionalism for example might not be an ideology in itself, but bespeaks of one. 

In all such cases, the source and center of human life is marginalized and lost. In its place, illusions multiply under the reign of alternating creeds that reduce to misfounded variants of humanism and naturalism. Under that delusive reign all possibilities of reigning in the impulses that drive to social disorder and human perdition recede. The greatest boon to man and human civilization, reason and its accoutrements, is subverted into the greatest bane to both. The potion that cures becomes the deadly chalice. The pathway to destruction in this world and perdition in the Next is strewn with golden chalices that have survived the generations they have duped and continue to entice those who blindly follow. 

The need to transcend the claims of a permissive society and to curb the effects of an unbridled individualism seem to be persistently offset by a contentious ethic of cultural relativism. The modern West takes pride in its rational liberalism, yet for all its reverent skepticism it is not at all sure how it can handle its growing human problems. The demand to do something about values that are turning into vices also grows. If this demand is more often articulated in terms that are more social than cultural, yet they frequently boil over into ominous incursions in the political arena. A catalogue of nagging issues tests the mettle of its intellectuals as much as the boundaries of its moral and political order. Drugs, sex, abortion, child abuse, pornography, a permanent underclass of homeless, invidious international relationships – these are among the social and global plagues of the day which constitute items of priority in that liberal order. The cultural resources of the Western tradition are strained to the limit, and the public debate which touches on such issues as ethics and public policy, or the relations between church and state, does more to disclose the strains in this tradition than to relieve them. 

Today, possibly at more than any other time in the past, there is a historical opportunity for an intellectual rapprochement between East and West. Here "East" is taken to imply the fount of Tradition, and to invoke the sapiential perspective. "West" is used to convey Modernity with the secular heritage of rationality and empiricism that it carries. Sapiential knowledge draws its validation from an inner dimension which is denied the rational and the empirical enterprise. In the meantime, rationality and empiricism have combined to produce an imposing civilization which, for all its ambiguities, holds out immense promise, for mankind. There is, however, an inner dimension to all being, a dimension which is integral and cannot be ignored. In its absence, as noted earlier, all material achievement is stripped of meaning, direction, and purpose. A vicious sense of futility becomes pervasive, and an elemental and insidious cynicism takes over. It is this substantial dimension which lies outside and beyond the scope of the empirical and the rational. At the root of this predicament is a fundamental misconception of the essence of civilization which results in a fatal ambivalence and a flagrant contradiction: "... the attempt to make a better world on the basis of a worsened humanity."(Reference?) In the resulting void, the tensions and anomalies inherent in modernity undermine its own achievements and, indeed, come to threaten all prospects of planetary survival. 

The circumstances, events and experience, expose modernity as a truncated project whose growing costs are fast outstripping its marginal benefits under the weight of the inner tensions produced by its flawed genesis. The consequences reflect inherent contradictions which have been variously diagnosed in the heyday of both Marxian and Weberian sociology. In the one case we have had the exposure of the forces of a dialectical materialism postulated on the inherent antagonisms between the modes of production and its social relations breaking the system into escalating phases of historical materialization and marking the progress of history; in the other case, we are confronted with the generic and escalating inconsistencies between the historical requisites of two inherent trends in rational culture: bureaucracy and democracy. At present, perhaps the most conspicuous of such contradictions are manifest in the fermenting tensions between the technical and the ethical bases of modern culture. This is the intersection at which redemptive efforts must take place to spare modernity the tremors of its own successes.  

It is these aspects of modernity that persist despite all the revolutionary rhetoric of the succeeding epochs and which make it imperative to subject that tradition to a radical critique. The function of that critique would be to pave the way for its transcendence, or short of that, to contribute to unleashing its self-correcting impulses. So far, all serious critical initiatives have proceeded from within the tradition, and all the so-called counter-cultures that have emerged in modern times have done so within the parameters of the dominant culture which they reject and against which they react. For all the acclaimed universality and despite the globalizing thrust that has accompanied the rise of modernity, the West remains embattled within its historical tradition and continues to be the victim of its compulsive ethnocentrism. To the extent that modernity impinges on life of humanity, however, its discourse cannot remain the preserve of the few. And to the extent that one variant of history is verging towards its exhaustion, we are living at an epochal threshold of transition to another variant and version which makes an extention of the discourse on modernity even more imperative. If modernity is to be successfully legitimated it will have to be re-examined (and reconstructed) at its sources and this will have to be conducted beyond the current framework of an inquiry which continues to be practiced within a constricting ethnocentrism. 

 

Cultural Rehabilitation

The need for cultural rehabilitation is a common need, which grows in urgency with the multiplying anomalies of our times. These anomalies are not confined to any one culture or system of thought to the exclusion of another. If we are to classify cultures in terms of their relations of power, we shall see that neither the subordinate cultures around the globe nor the hegemonic culture of the West escapes the afflictions of a pervasive state of cultural disarray. The specific sources of this malaise may differ from one case to another and diagnostics vary. In the case of the West, beneath a deceptive veneer of elusive dynamism and pulsating vitality, morbidity lurks. In the words of a perceptive and typically scathing analyst, "the hangover of civilizational atheism and secularism" is finally taking its toll on the Western psyche, and everywhere the symptoms of an acute identity crisis prevail. The roots of this crisis lie in a deep ontological/epistemological morass. Having renounced God, Western man rendered himself impotent in the face of the problems of knowledge and power. The "death of God" theology brought with it, together with the inevitable darkness of the human soul, an imminent blankness in the human mind resulting in a sense of loss of meaning and direction. The consequences of the aberrations of the hegemonic culture are, by definition, not confined to the generative culture. Instead, they become the benchmarks of "modernity" and come to set the standards for the scramble among the subordinate cultures, whose members now brace to catch up on their dooms race. In this way the cultural disarray endemic to the West comes to be grafted onto the other cultures, and adds confusion to inertia and morbidity to senility. But all is not necessarily gloom and doom. 

Indeed, it is our contention here that the depths of global cultural disarray and disorientation are matched by potentially inexhaustible expanses of “life-chances” for cultural renovation and for the sanification of the basis of our global civilization. These chances are anchored in an accessible fund of structured resources which remain to be "discovered" -- in the Kuhnian sense - appropriated, integrated, and related to the relevant operational contexts. 

These “chances” will have to observe certain standards if they are to achieve their purpose. They will have to be inclusive, universalist, deliberating on means and ends, and reverent of an innate human spiritually and dignity that must be acknowledged in its ultimate Source and Referent. They will need to develop the language and terms that will foster communication and mutual dependencies beyond the range of exploitation and power interest. This calls on the resources and aptitudes of a variety of human skills and sciences. Additionally, a root re-orientation in fundamental attitudes to the conception of the Self/Other postulate will be at stake here, although it will need to be evolved in the course of the discourse itself and not simply assumed at the outset as the condition for its engagement.  

Role of  the Social Sciences

It is not surprising that the social sciences should be the battlefield for this critical, crucial effort. The social sciences provide the scaffolding of modernity, and they increasingly fall short of their promise to deliver in terms of their own understanding of their "function" in procuring human progress. Instead of enhancing our knowledge and understanding of society and ourselves and, rather than being resources for enhancing our ability to improve our societies and the world in which we live, their effectiveness has been confined to their perversion as instruments of manipulation and control in the interest of the powers at stake. 

Notwithstanding the pervasive ambivalence and skepticism, there is also a perceptible orientation in the direction of new sources for ideas and a discernible need, even a willingness, to explore alternative options to those associated with the legacy of the Enlightenment, for reconceptualizing authority, identity, and community. It is true that this openness within the spectrum of competing voices/visions within the discipline is very tentative and it is not without its encumbrances whether in its inherited burdens or in its self-imposed constraints; nor is the search for new ways of thinking culturally 'dispassionate' or contextually 'indifferent'. Not all sources or cultures are viewed from the same lens and the forces of attraction and repulsion that modulate this tentative opening in the present dialogical search (in the West) are hardly intrinsic to their fields. Still, in these circumstances of potential epistemic openings on the global horizons, where new spaces for knowledge in its diverse modes, configurations, and sources may be cultivated, the opportuneness/prospects for generating/regenerating are compelling.  

Contrasting Epistemes

Given the global village, where a century’s technological accomplishments have dissipated the physical distances between communities and cultures, the East/West encounter has become doubly imperative: not just to avoid the consequences of such potentially explosive misunderstandings, but also to deliberate together and to redefine the bounds of rationality and the meaning of community. Attention to the integrality of culture on the one hand, as well as to the relativity and historicity of its artifacts is central. This is an antidote to the tendency to reify approaches and disciplines as rational and objective, as given as opposed to constructed categories. How knowledge is classified at any moment, the boundaries assumed between its different compartments, the processes of integration and differentiation, and the ordering and the parameters of the episteme are all functions of a given culture as much as its conditioning matrix. To that extent, they are likely to be historically determined. It is equally plausible to assume that different histories may claim and exact their different covalences in the culture in question if it taken in its essential meaning as a medium and mode for moral self-realization in a temporal setting. Every civilization has its basic foundations and the characteristic parameters within which it grows. Yet, the quality of the civilization, its caliber, will invariably vary in both relative and absolute terms.  

The hermeneutics of cultural understanding call for a realistic and thorough understanding of the self, the Other, and the situation in which the dialogue proceeds. To understand ourselves, we need to examine our own heritage critically; to understand the Other, we need to acquire a similar critical insight into its heritage and familiarize ourselves with its culture; to understand the situation in which the modern encounter takes place, there is a need to be sufficiently conversant with the dynamics and the historicity of this relationship, i.e. to be aware of its various configurations, transfigurations, the stages it has gone through, and the influences and confluences it has sustained. Understanding is the prelude to effectively acting to secure the necessary changes. In either case, a strategy is needed, whether for restructuring the terms of global culture exchange or for equipping the participants for the task. 

Additionally, extending the field of cultural discourse and renegotiating its terms is a necessary condition for evolving a new synthesis that could validate a responsive and responsible social theory. Such a theory is required to meet the needs of a global moral economy, and it calls for a thorough mobilization of the moral human reserves to achieve it. Contrary to the passions and interests of its wielders, Modernity presupposes and disposes towards an inclusiveness, rather than exclusiveness. Depending on its guiding lights, it can be tuned to embrace, not displace, in an essentially pluralist world constituted of a diversity of cultures, where there is little room for uniformity and less for autarchy. Yet, this diversity will need to subsist and thrive within a dominant order or a "chessman" of some kind. The search is for the rules which can equitably structure this order without sacrificing accommodation to dominance, and without ceding the grounds to anarchy. The prevailing episteme is necessarily of a global order, and the required social theory that is compatible with it will have to go beyond meeting formal organizational demands to effectively addressing the moral challenges of a global and technological age. It will have to be a theory with a strong penchant for praxis. To conceive of a paradigm which can assure the framework and animus in which such a social theory can develop will need a new and dynamic medium of cultural discourse and intercourse. This is where the idea of a Contrasting Episteme fulfills a need and projects a principled path for novel attitudes, perceptions, practices, and patterns of cultural dealings. 

The objective of a Contrasting Episteme is to contribute to a conceptual framework which would make it possible to study and compare cultures within their respective civilizational parameters with the purpose of understanding and  effectively communicating across and among cultures, i.e., intra- and inter-culturally. Beyond that, it aims at discovering / recovering some transcultural values that can be shared and put into practice to reinforce and ennoble an expanding heritage that feeds into the shaping global order that is the destiny of our age.   As such, a Contrasting Episteme opens on an extended forum of dialogue, whether along the lines of an East-West encounter, or in terms of more specific power political, issue-focused, or inter-faith oriented dialogues. Significant about our initiative here is the attempt to carry the encounter to grounds of epistemology and social theory: a perspective which is brought to the fore by the dawning cultural and intellectual revival in the Muslim hemisphere signaled in by those who seek to relate the principles of their faith to the basis of their worldly knowledge and activity, and to put an end to a breach in faith and life itself by reintegrating their world view to their lived world. The other, more significant, aspect of novelty lies in the distinctive point of departure and assumptions which inform the attempt. 

A Contrasting Episteme starts by exploring the differences within parameters and with given ends in view which preclude its being bound to cultural insularities. It is predicated on the affirmation of the essential unity of mankind in its creation, nature, and destiny, and on its fundamental diversity, multiformity, and complementarity in consequence of its createdness and imminence. Against this, it maintains the alterity of its Creator and Sustainer, who is the Absolute in Oneness, Self-Subsistence, and Transcendence. The alterity of Transcendence is qualitatively on another, incomparable plane to alterity within the created order, which is one of interdependence and complementarity postulated on human want as opposed to God's self-sufficiency. Because the divine economy is one of mercy, compassion, and benevolence, man is equipped with all the faculties and provided with all the bounties and conditions which assure him the satisfaction of his human needs. But it is of the nature of this satisfaction to be imperfect, for perfection belongs to the realm of the Absolute. This want of perfection becomes the dynamic for a continued growth and an urge for self-betterment. God is the absolute of all of qualities and faculties, and in His divine providence He provides man with all the qualities and faculties needed to sustain him in his earthly sojourn. Pre-eminent among these is the faculty to reason: to discern, to discourse, and to deliberate on the elements of our global civilization which affect us all. We should be able to do so in a language and on terms that are accessible to all, and which are developed along the lines of a hermeneutic of mutuality. This is the only ethos compatible with the anthropology outlined above, which, at the same time, is realistic enough to address the needs of a global moral economy. In emphasizing the elements of transcendence and the axial plane of alterity, we do so with another purpose in view, relating to the instrumentalities of our analytical framework and the conceptual distinctions implicit in its archetypal constructs. 

The premises of a Contrasting Episteme ensure that it reinforces the bonds that bridge without dissolving the identities that build. It assures a place for the Other in any ongoing discourse. It subsumes the postulate that for every conception of reality there is another possibility, which is more than its counterfoil, and as such merits investigation in its own terms. This outlook has a particular advantage when this articulation comes from a submerged layer in the conversation. The only guarantee that this perception will not be forgotten or simply overlooked is to integrate it structurally in the framework of the discourse. "Contrasting" is effective to the extent that it accommodates diversity. It is not that kind of reflexivity which proceeds in terms of deprecating the one, as a measure of inflating the other, for it is not cast in the mirror image of Self/Other. Power might be a zero sum game; but culture, which is the domain of meaning and value, is not. In dispelling myths and distortions which obscure mutual understanding, it removes the obstructions to constructive interaction.

  [ The will to truth as a component and corollary to the cognitive competence and potential to entertain truth! ]

Furthermore, Contrasting Epistemes is taken as the framework and strategy for accessing the potential Muslim role, as the "contrast" highlights alternative modes of knowledge and emphasizes the God-centered humanist vantage point, epitomized in tawhid (unity), for reappraising modernity through its theoretical accomplishments. The instrumentality of the contrast is consummated and vindicated when a new plane of inquiry is reached where the area of overlap in a critical and reflective discourse opens outward onto a new synthesis of perceptions and attitudes.  

Oscillating and Median Culture Types

Implementing a Contrasting Episteme calls for its own semantic field and relevant modes of _expression. The task of abstraction, which is inherent in all social theory, is at hand. The mental constructs necessary to provide a medium for articulation and representation have been developed as a response to this need. They are designed to broadly convey those characteristics and dispositions which are likely to be encountered in the different cultural traditions, and which I refer to as "culture-modes." They serve as reference points and intelligible channels or media for accessing the issues that emerge in a common discourse. At one level, this mental construct could be approximated to the Weberian Ideal-type analysis. Schematically projected in our field, it yields some preliminary insights into two basically distinct and different ways of knowing and being as they are flashed through their respective lenses: the one is identified as the Oscillating Culture, and the other as the Median Culture. They take their impetus from their respective bearings, which are defined in relation to the Transcendent and to the place of Revealed Guidance in their epistemic matrix. In knowledge conceived predominantly within the framework of a horizontal axis, the axial plane of alterity retains an ambiguity which in practice marginalizes its impact on the operational culture. 

Culture modes are seen to cluster round two basic types which may for the purpose at hand be designated as the nodal poles of the cultural spectrum. The Oscillating node is conceived to take its bearings from a horizontal axis; the Median from a vertical axis. The first refers to a flat bearing as of a plain; the other to a spherical or conical optic-as with a lens. The first is uni-dimensional; the other is multi-dimensional. The first is postulated on the autonomy of human reason, the other places this autonomy beyond reason; divine revelation is axial to the Median mode and the circuit of human consciousness operates within its framework, unlike the case in the Oscillating where divine revelation is incidental or marginal and is itself made to be contingent on human consciousness. In the first mode, the phenomenal/visible world is a self-sufficient, self-subsistent entity which begins and ends with itself in the here and now; in the other mode, that of the critical bearing, the life-world exists in time and points beyond itself: history is only a fraction of an extended temporal zone which spans the hereafter and relates it to the here-and-now.  

More specifically, the Oscillating Culture is generally identified with a secular paradigm of knowledge and being because it has no reference outside itself. If it takes man for its center it is assumed to be “humanist;” and it takes nature, or the cosmos, or history for its referent it is assumed to be “naturalist” or anti-humanist. In reality, the Oscillating Culture is more noted for the absence of a core than for any fixity of such, and it is more or less given to the persistent search for one, although at times it has tended to degenerate into the refutation of the very idea of a center. This accounts for an intrinsic “dynamism.” This dynamism however tends towards morbidity and is more simulated than real. It marks the restive quest for an evasive center and referent. It is alternately marked by the periodic reversals and surface ruptures which give rise to an illusive vitality and foster a generative abundance. In this way, there is also something characteristically “modern” about this culture type. 

This is all in stark contrast to the Median Culture. There, change, which is intrinsic to temporality, is modulated by an element of constancy assured by the continuity or the reliability of an established frame of reference. This suggests the presence of a dimension of authority which evades the Oscillating Culture, not because the latter has no acknowledgeable authority, but because the nature of this authority is perennially challenged and frequently assumes an evasiveness which makes if defy location. In the Median Culture, the most notable feature is the pervasiveness of a center which is known and knowable, and an acknowledged core which constitutes a nodal reference point for the operational social/historical dynamic in this medium. The result is that there is an inherent sense of measure and proportion which is assumed to govern all change and action and to assure it direction. Its dynamic assumes a generative momentum which enables the operants in the system to identify or to relate coordinates and the variables in it. In the Oscillating Culture, the dynamic was contingent on a persistent tension of polarities and a recurrent polarization of tensions ultimately giving way to an apotheosis of relativism. 

These culture-types may be summed up here as the temporal refractions of two essential outlooks on the life-world, both potential and actual; although, at the present time the one dominates and the other is seemingly on the defensive as it presses for its self-articulation and instantiation. The fact, however, is that this defensiveness is only surface gloss, for the resilience and persistence of homo religioso and his matrix of reality has defeated all contrary wills. The first culture-type is expressed in the secularist and materialist vernacular and is embedded in a cult of autonomy and finitude; ostensibly, it promotes a positivistic and objectivist ethos which, however, remains intrinsically and distinctly subjectivist to the core. The other type embodies the culture mode and life-affirming ethos generated by the belief in the oneness of God, as the creator and sustainer, Life-principle and ultimate guide and source of direction for a universe and a humanity that is essentially one, i.e. the tawhidi paradigm. 

The Tawhidi Episteme

At its core, the tawhidi episteme is rooted in the 'nous'- basically, an  ideal essence, which is accessible to humans by virtue of ‘natural reason’, as well as, by divine revelation. As a tradition of rational discourse among a venerable generation of Muslim thinkers has demonstrated, it is only through the latter that the essence of tawhid is authenticated, validated and complete. It cannot be otherwise. The record of modern efforts to take human reason or experience for the ultimate measure has only provided a practical confirmation, if such were needed, of the futility of the quest.  

It is in the Qur'an that one can find the uncompromising essence of tawhid. In Islam the worshipper is not called upon to worship God, for such is assumed to be the most natural human disposition. It is rooted in fitrah, the created, innate nature that constitutes generic man. The warning is against the temptation to associate other ways and other objects with pure worship. This constitutes the real "fall of man", and it is only in this sense that man cardinally sins, or is disposed to such. The obverse of tawhid is shirk - an act which is described in the Qur'an as the greatest zulm. It is the darkest and gloomiest wrong man could commit for it is a wrong that foremost afflicts the self and deflects it from the path of recovery. This is why God who is the Most Forgiving, the Most Gracious, and the Most Merciful, will forgive man everything except the commission of shirk. In other words, in the Islamic episteme, the root of all evil is shirk; just as the source of all goodness is tawhid. 

The matrix in the tawhidi paradigm is a fundamentally stable one, integrally coherent, cohesive and whole. It is a matrix that originated in and is sustained by the pivotal and equilibrating role of a historically and generically incorruptible source. While accessible to the human cognitive circuit, this source originates beyond that circuit, and at the same time as it indubitably relates to it, indeed penetrates it, it retains its genuine integrity and particular self-sufficiency. It is the only case where the idea of maintaining the wells of truth “untainted beyond the city walls” is promoted from a hypothetical construct to a historical plausibility. In this source, the medium of transmission and the message-content, the act and the deed, converge to crystallize in the cosmic event of wahy, or the tanzil, more commonly known as “revelation.” This tawhidi resonance of essence and meaning finds its _expression in every vernacular and across all cultures, because it addresses universal categories that appeal to a common humanity. 

A cultural hermeneutic conceived in the spirit of a tawhidi ethos, impartial and at the same time engaged, could provide the corrective and the measure to safeguard against complacency and to spur on a benevolent sense of equity in regard for others. It would be impartial in terms of its distancing from contending egoisms, its “bracketing” of the self-centered impulse; it would be engaged in its commitment to the pursuit of the truth and its fulfillment in history: in the “worlding of the world.”  

Islam as a Force of Global Renewal

Historically, Islam has served as a catalyst for renewing culture and civilization.. Indeed, where the foundations for such renewal were weak or eroded, Islam provided the ligaments and consolidated the grounds for the requisite human and social development. The records are replete with accounts of peoples who, upon their accession to Islam, virtually came to make it into history. The legendary breakthrough of the Arabs will perhaps continue to provide the most illustrious example of such a people who, out of a chronic state of anonymity and marginality, rose to the pinnacle of glory and achievement. Within the space of decades, the Arabs had outgrown the phase of tribal parochialism to become the uncontested masters of empire and the heralds of an open and expanding world community. But this illustrious example was not confined to the history of the Arabs. It was repeated in the case of Berbers, Turks, Mongols, Persians, Indians, Malays and the kingdoms in West and East Africa. The cultural fluorescence of the Iberian and Mediterranean cities which came into contact with Islam is another case in point. Despite the dense "cultural barrier" provided by the virulently anti-Islam crusading spirit in the medieval West, it was the contact with "Islamdom" that, ironically enough, contributed to the birth of "Christendom" as a self-conscious and culturally unified entity, a counter-culture in search of its political _expression. It was the commercial, cultural and intellectual currents which followed in the train of the Crusades that steadily came to disperse the shrouds of the European "Dark Ages" and to usher in the Renaissance.  

In each and every case, once the biases are discarded and the records are set straight, Islam may be confirmed in retrospect as a vital civilizing agent and a force of renewal and regeneration. In each place, Islam acted as an agent of regeneration and renewal because in every case it acted upon the moral and the spiritual foundations of society. It did so by channeling and orientating its latent energies into positive outlets and constructive venues. In the case of those who accepted Islam as a religion and a way of life, the change was intrinsic, as it grew out of the remolded psyche, personality, affinity, identity and aspirations. The channeling and reorientation here may be seen to have essentially sprung out of the human element to condition and encompass the social environ. In the case of those who came as individuals and communities to live and to develop within the Islamic ecumene, dar al-Islam, Islam provided the setting and the congenial framework for achievement and self-development. In other cases, the Islamic agency influenced the Other by way of the model or the example it provided, and by the stimulus it gave to activating the impulses to self-betterment and excellence in the Other. In the context of our immediate concern with Modernity and the tawhidi episteme, it is important to recall that Islam acted on the level of the perceptions of the community. It served as a rationalizing influence upon the epistemological matrix. 

Historically, of all the Traditions rooted in a Divine Message, Islam constitutes the only such tradition where the channels of transmission have retained their integrity and where the sources remain accessible to an informed human endeavor and a reformed understanding. It is this accessibility which enables us to speak of a fund of "structured resources" that is available for cultural renewal. Moreover, granted that it is ostensibly in the nature of all living Traditions to provide the wellsprings of cultural renewal, as the advocates of the traditionalist perspective seem to suggest, then the particular potential for rejuvenation and renewal which inheres in the Islamic Tradition on the one hand, and its specifically all-embracing nature on the other, lend significant credibility to Islam as a force of global cultural renewal. Islam, the carrier of the Primordial Tradition, the din al-fitrah, is also historically the harbinger of a universal tradition that is equally distinct and unique. Expansive as it expands, it accommodates the differences as it embraces the diversity, and it protects the other traditions while it prevails over them. As such, Islam, which seeks to derive and develop its critical cognitive apparatus from the sources of this Tradition, constitutes a challenge to those concerned with the prospects of contemporary civilization. Its poignancy lies in the relevance of its message of rehabilitation and renovation. It is destined to play a major role in giving meaning and direction, and accordingly, in reorienting and renewing our global civilization.  

Notwithstanding the ostensible claims to the contrary, the Islamic paradigm of knowledge can radically transform the prevailing parameters of critique and reconstruction. The universality inherent in this paradigm has at least two redeeming features which are clearly in demand at this juncture of world history: In its attitude to a cultural diversity which threatens to become problematic in a globalizing culture, it integrates without dissolving and it mediates the fragmenting tendencies which attend diversity without negating specificity. Currently, whatever institutional arrangements which might operate in a given setting in the direction of restraint and containment are contingent on an economy of power and a culture of domination. The other significantly relevant feature about the universality intrinsic to the Islamic paradigm of knowledge is its potential for re-aligning technicity to ethics, or rationality to legitimacy. 

At present, the Islamic paradigm of knowledge has lapsed into the recesses of human history. Yet it remains a dormant potentiality. The elements which generated and alimented it are impervious to the corruptibility inherent in all temporality, and attendant on all the artifacts mediated through human agency. It is part of the Divine economy, however, to provide the seeds for a cultural regeneration and to leave it to human endeavor (jihad and ijtihad) to sow and to reap. The need is for a new brand of scholarship. The challenge to this new scholarship and intellect is not only to conceive of the possibility of this alternative perspective, but also to realize it. It will need to formulate this conception at successive levels of refinement and to diversify its articulation and relate it to multiple contexts. Evolving such a perspective will evidently occur in the course of a dynamic interaction against a setting which is structured and tempered by the language, norms and modalities of an already existing discourse that is open to challenge.  

The main argument can be summed up in a few salient points. Islam provides a credible and viable response to our vital needs today: The pervasive cultural disarray characteristic of our times acts as a corrosive force on contemporary civilization. The credibility and viability of this Islamizing response inhere in the message of Islam itself. The relevance, however, of this message to the immediate context as an instrument of rehabilitation and renewal will need to be developed by a scholarship capable of bridging the rift between cultures to the benefit of all. The field of such a scholarship must necessarily impinge on some of the following issue-areas: the implications of culture for civilization, the centrality of the episteme to both, and the principal characteristics of the Islamic mode of knowing and its effective consequences. 

The tenor of such a movement reflects an optimistic bent. This optimism is predicated on a faith in human possibilities as well as in the existence of a Providential compassion. It sees recovery and renewal as effective and realizable potentials that are rooted in the ontology of the human condition as a manifestation of the divine will and purpose. This conception it believes is accessible both to empirical verification through observation of the fitric disposition as well as to normative corroboration through interpreting the chain of divine revelation. (i.e. through observing Nature and the laws of nature, and through attentiveness to implicit and explicit guidance embedded in the course of revelation as text and precedent). It further believes that this regenerative possibility is ultimately grounded in a moral imperative to act in this direction. We can see how in the above mode of reasoning, we are clearly working from a matrix of assumptions which among other conceptions, include an understanding of human nature and human agency, of the purpose of existence, of a conception of time and of an environmental ecology. In this way, the Islamic paradigm of knowledge shares the same terrain occupied by the modern disciplines of social and human inquiry, although it approaches that terrain from its own assumptions and in terms of a distinctive idiom on account of its particular sources of knowledge and its criteria of validity and truth. It is this dawning awareness among modern Muslim intellectuals which has prompted the questioning of the dominant paradigms in their fields, and that has stimulated them to explore other possibilities deriving from tawhid. 

Islam, Tawhid and the Social Sciences

The strength, plausibility, and appeal of an Islamic paradigm of knowledge and praxis in the social sciences evidently lies in its validity as a mode of discourse, as well as in its viability as a standard of effective action. In a sense, the "context of discovery" is the historical arena itself, while the "context for justification" is inherently generated. This double relevance enhances its reconstructive potential in the one field and the other. Its activation however depends on how far enterprising scholars, Muslims and others, are able to articulate and relate this perspective to the times and how effective they can be in engaging the existing paradigms in an evolving discourse. These scholars will, also, differ from the norm, in that they, in line with the Islamic paradigm, will have to be vocationists. 

The vocational social scientist is one who lives the crisis of the profession and, beyond that, the crisis of the times. His or her conscience and integrity combine with intelligence to invoke a sense of moral responsibility which induces social scientists to use their training to the best of their abilities to do what they can from their professional position or their station in life in order to alleviate the situation. Depending on their position and their authority, they will apply themselves in a practical or a theoretical capacity. The first instance of a morally responsible stance is to acknowledge the critical condition, or the malaise. But this is hardly sufficient to absolve the conscience or to assuage the intelligence. In exploring alternatives and ways to improvise and reform, the need is to muster the courage to step out of the dominant paradigm and to step into new and at first unfamiliar ground. The moment potentialities are sensed and possibilities are unearthed, the initiative to effect the leap should be taken. This is why it is significant to understand the Median Culture for what it is: a distinct possibility and potentiality for improving on oneself, and not to see it in terms of a self-abandoning to the Other. Perceiving it as the historically cultural Other would encumber and trammel the process of stepping in. The inhibitions and constraints attendant on such a frame of mind would throttle any possibilities and opportunities. 

The challenge to the vocationist is to divest himself or herself of all kinds of prejudices and preconceptions as far as this is possible, for this constitutes the psychological and sociological baggage which hinders the advance into the new culture realm. He or she will have to be able to give of him or herself in order to be able to take of that realm. A Contrasting Episteme conceived in the tawhidi view gives the vocationist the benefit of the doubt in his or her own ability to overcome many of the binding constraints. This is a grounded conviction backed by historical experience. This legacy testifies to the validity of a proposition inscribed into the epistemological outlook of the Median Culture. The challenge to overcome the constraints of the profession is itself further reinforced by the gravity of the consequences at stake in the event of a continued indifference or inability to respond to the needs of contemporary societies. Not only might social theory steadily marginalize itself beyond all relevance, but the survival of these very societies as we know them may well be a matter only of time. The hope for reviving both lies in the emergence of the vocationist, whose stock and surety can be drawn from the wellsprings of that Median culture-medium. 

Conclusion

We have reached a point where modernity itself will have to be saved, or the human condition will cease to be. The interface is no longer simply between cultures; but the tensions mount within modernity itself and it operates across cultures. In attempting to grapple with the roots of the malaise, one is reminded of the metaphor used by Rifkin to describe the culture of our times. It is the rhizome. A surface-deep structure and growth that however maintains and exerts an insidious stranglehold upon whatever body or space it contaminates. 

The tensions that arise in the heart of modernity are not new. They were there from the outset and they have been variously diagnosed and described by the master thinkers of our age. Its metaphors are those of rupture and fracture; in the post-modern idiom, implosion is deployed to measure the depths as well as the consequences of a ruptured course of history and a fractured humanity.  

We have come a long way from the naive and ideological bluff that dubs the movement to re-align modern knowledge to a perennial system of values as a "fundamentalist" reaction and an "ill-structured response to modernity". We have seen that the Islamic paradigm of knowledge, far from being a parochial revulsion against modernity, or a xenophobic and inflammatory anti-western current, represents an inclusive orientation towards a global order, that would transcend the exclusivist, power-intoxicated, and self-interested practices that currently constrain that order. One thing critics may observe remains true however. If the Islamic paradigm of knowledge is successfully pursued to its logical conclusion, it would indeed undermine the very bases of our modern knowledge, particularly as it is projected in the body of positivist disciplines subsumed under the social sciences. Bearing in mind the repressive and manipulative orientations of this dominant and domineering kind of knowledge, I am not sure that this would be a loss. On the other hand, we need to remember that modernity has been celebrated as a project for human emancipation and an attempt has been made to separate its institutional power-political manifestations from its cultural essence in an effort to preserve its innocence. Renouncing its own trademark in a hermeneutics of suspicion and an obstinate skepticism, we might grant the truth of this intention in a moment of good faith. In this case, the presumed subversiveness of a tawhidi strategy can hardly hold against its therapeutic thrust in exposing the intrinsic constraints which militate against fulfilling the emancipatory intentions of Modernity. Rather, the Islamic paradigm, the tawhidi episteme, could mark a welcome devolution toward a more self-critical and reflexive consciousness that could lead to a morally more responsible version of human knowledge. 

However it is clear that in order for the Islamic paradigm of knowledge to gain ground as a universal orientation capable of fulfilling its ends to the benefit of all, there will be every need to pool the available human resources to make it prevail. Muslim scholars may be the natural core in this mobilization effort by virtue of their context and access; but these very factors, namely context and access, can hardly remain the preserve of Muslims for long in a globe transmuted by the very modernity that is now at stake. This makes the orientation represented by the tawhidi episteme equally open to other scholars too who are aware of the discomfitures of modernity and critical of the status quo and who above all seek to justify their own self-image and the image of modern culture as a morally sound enterprise that promotes the material welfare and biological survival of the human race as well as assuring the conditions its spiritual sanity and moral integrity. To take recourse to a current idiom in our continuing effort to bridge cultures and worldviews in the desire to speed up the transition to an ethically conscious world culture, I would point to the "empowering" implications of this Median cultural orientation expressed in tawhid. 

I would further stress that once the meaning and implications of Islam as reasoned faith and as faith-in-reason has been redefined to encompass a global moral community, there would be far less reason to react compulsively against the very designation of this orientation. We are already witnessing a world in which the representatives of a deeply afflicted humanity are on the verge of a massive conversion: but it is a conversion that is intellectual and moral: and it is here that we as scholars working through the conventional media of our disciplines draw the line at the thin end of the wedge between preaching Islam to win peoples' hearts to the faith, and between operationalizing the ethical bearings of the faith to make it relevant to the modern human condition. The latter is the crux of our pursuit. Faith, on the other hand, in the sense of iman, is its foundation. Faith remains however, as understood from the tenor of an Islamic discourse, the preserve of the individual conscience, and the implications of the tawhidi episteme for this area of the human conscience is to preserve and safeguard it by restituting the boundaries of the sacred in human life. 

Beyond this it is possible to work towards a consensus of a public order and towards the institutionalizing of the parameters of a public morality on which all God-conscious constituent communities can agree. This is an area that can be jointly cultivated by the partisans of what contemporary thinkers and philosophers in the West call a theocentric humanism. Islamization of knowledge as a universalizing and regenerative orientation accommodates and supports these currents regardless of their diverging emphases for it is ultimately conceived in the crucible of the Abrahamic paradigm that in fact subsumes the Adamite legacy and is the common heritage of the major world faiths. There is ample room within this heritage for any residual categories, for the emphasis is inclusion, not the reverse. The challenge is to make this paradigm and its idioms of inquiry intelligible and communicable to the widest circle possible. Beyond theory, there remains the praxis which is integral to that paradigm and which, in consequence, becomes an aspect of this challenge and opportunity for realizing the potentials of moral agency in history. 

In the course of restructuring paradigms and communicating intelligibilities, the blinders that inhibit understanding would be removed and the undergrowth and the seeds and weeds of prejudice and fear that feed on ignorance and distance would be cleared, and like a clearing in the dense forests of the human psyche, the rays would shine through to illumine the kind of perceptions and understandings that make the global reconstruction possible. This is perhaps where the heart of the challenge to the Islamizing impulse lies. It calls for nothing less than engaging in a task of removing the impediments and clearing the minds and distilling the passions which have traditionally blocked the access to an Islamic discourse particularly in the historical West. The power-ridden context in which the Islamizing scholar ventures upon this task merely adds to the challenge and the opportunity of redressing the image and misrepresentation of Islam. Here too, this is not a task that befalls Muslims alone, and fortunately we are living at a time where others as well are shouldering the burden of enlightenment - despite and amidst the shadows of a gathering storm that recurrently hovers in murky climes. 

As this re-presentation of Islam advances, one of the staying ambivalences in the Western tradition would be alleviated and a historically momentous step would have been taken in addressing the derailment of modernity at its roots. The temporal and sacred geography of Islam reinterpreted in this regenerative and inclusive cultural and ethical orientation would undoubtedly also gain new dimensions. Beyond our ijtihads at redefining and relating the substance of an orientation inspired by the sources of Islam and by its historical precedents, the revelation it enshrines continues to act as it always has: As the culmination of a divine tradition of human guidance and as its mediator in an ecological metaxy that is neither of the East nor of the West, but is both of the East and the West precisely because it flows from the Creator and sustainer of the universe, Lord of the Easts and the Wests. The promise then that the Islamic paradigm of knowledge holds is a promise inspired by reclaiming a cognitive orientation that seeks to reintegrate values to knowledge and to resolve the tensions and transcend the fissures associated with modernity. The structures of this orientation might at present be frail simply because this is a nascent orientation and no human enterprise is conceived whole from its inception, but its development is the function of the efforts that go into it. This elementary insight is gleaned from empirical observation as much as it is taught by the course of Revelation. 

While there is no doubt about either the divine capacity for a creation by fiat or for projecting the perfection and wholeness of divine revelation from its inception onto the temporal setting, yet, the lesson taught and learned in the course of embedding the guidance into the human context is one of incremental growth and transformation. It took twenty-two years to complete the prophetic mission that left behind it the foundations of a historical community and a nascent historical civilization. Promises, moreover, are future-oriented and their credibility lies not so much in the structures that support them as in the intentions that ground them. In this sense, the Islamic paradigm of knowledge may be qualified as a well-grounded response to modernity. The fundamentals in which it is grounded further assure it of the threshold of consensus that makes it possible to mobilize the social and global support that would translate into the structures of a regenerate and inclusive humane order. 

If we end on this optimistic note of confidence, it is precisely because the cultural movement and alternative that we have presented here is primarily grounded in faith and reason and because it is a movement that in opening to the future, does not forget the past. Rather, by every count and measure, it becomes the medium and the guarantor of the integrity of our humanity and the continuity of its tradition.