Mohammad Abed al-Jaberi Ideas on the Thought Challenges and Indigenous Social Sciences in the Islamic World A Critique

In the past two centuries, Muslim scholars’ thinking has been mainly shaped by the evolutionary needs of Muslims in the new world. These thinkers strived for an Islamic renaissance by presenting novel readings of Islam, sometimes with a glimpse at the Western conceptualizations, to produce the social knowledge that could respond to the emerging problems of the Muslim society. In the present paper, the idea of producing a local and independent social science is evaluated with an emphasis on the concept of the ‘Arabic wisdom’ in the case of Mohammad Abed al-Jaberi who is investigated regarding the subject matter, methodology, and theory. In respect to the subject matter, Jaberi’s pathology of indigenization and his concepts and phenomenology are analyzed. As to the methodology and theory, we have studied the environmental factors involved in his education and studies including the influential thinkers and the theoretical frameworks manifest in his works. The study of Abed al-Jaberi shows that he has been influenced by the Western theories in his typology of the Arab theoretical and practical encounter with the traditional world and equations in the new world, although he has, by no means, believed in a step-by-step modeling after the Western theories. His stark emphasis on the indigenousness and originality of the Arab and the Islamic sociology has never restricted him to the ideas of Arab, Islamic or Asian thinkers; rather, he interprets ‘science’ in its universal sense. His scientific heritage is indicative of a ‘special social thinking’ rather than a ‘specific social science’. On the other hand, Jaberi does not only consider modern concepts of democracy, freedom, rationality, etc., as against Islam, but he also acknowledges the benefits of such a conceptualization in rationalizing the Islamic tradition as both a must and the only alternative.