THE MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SADILLAEV HAMIDULLA

SOCIOLOGY G1631221
 SOCIOLOGY is:
• A field of inquiry (question) which is aimed at increasing knowledge
through the observation of human beings
• THEIR:
• Customs
• Rituals
• Superstitions (unfounded belief)
• Models of organization and disorganization
• Laws
• Politics
• economics
 MUSLIM CIVILIZATION
PRODUCED:

•Philosophical, ethnographic and historical data

•Which is rich in its sociological variety
•And quite advanced in its methodological concerns

•(Ethnographic: relating to the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs,
habits, and mutual differences)
 Three major sources which provided impulse toward such
knowledge among medieval Muslims:

Quran • Deals with the history of mankind

Philosophy of ancient • Muslim civilization inherited the rich but

Greece secular philosophies of ancient Greece

Spread of the Muslim • From the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean

empire (Khilafah)
 Muslim contribution
to sociology does not necessarily
have to be ISLAMIC

• There is a general tendency (orientation) among scholars to

confuse Islam with what Muslims do,
• Whereas what Muslims actually do may vary from being
Islamic and non-Islamic to being un-Islamic or anti-Islamic.
 Should we blame contemporary sociologists to be value-
neutral?

Some of the very major Muslim contributions to this field have been
without any noticeable practical concern.

Writings of scholars • Have yielded rich ethnographic data not only

as Sa’id, al-Biruni, Ibn on various Muslim communities but also on non-
Battuta and others Muslim communities in Africa, India and China.
 Ibn Khaldun – The father of the science
of society

He provided a
theoretical • Aimed at purifying history
frame

Deductive • To the otherwise raw, data

collecting habits of the then
pattern ethnographers
 The human nature – according to
Ibn Khaldun

Man is weak initially ignorant and Allah gave man the power of
basically self-centered reasoning and abstract thinking

He explains society in terms of necessity rather than its being

natural or automatic
 Sociology of law
Banu • Referring to the works of the Imams: Abu Hanifah,
Malik, Shafi’i, Hanbal and various other scholars
Umayyah • Digging deep into the Qur’an and Hadith, these
and Banu scholars were able to
Abbas • establish rules of Islamic jurisprudence

In doing this, • Not only saved the ummah from utter religious chaos,
they also
these • Left a tradition according to which the Islamic law
scholars could be reformulated and modified
 Contemporary Muslim Sociologists
• Several Muslim students have been trained in sociology in the
West or
• They have been trained by those who got their education in
the Western tradition of sociology
• These Muslim sociologists do not face much of an Islamic
dilemma in their studies.
• Instead of showing any originality (creation) within the field of
sociology
• They remained satisfied, for the most part, with their
respective roles as technician; or,
• As pioneers in sociology in their respective countries
 But the situation is not completely hopeless!

• Since the termination of the Islamic Khilafah in and

around the year 40 after hijrah, there have
always insisted in every generation a number of
Muslims who struggled in their own ways to
convince the ummah and its leaders to go back to
that system of government.
• While the Khawarij carried their armed struggle
against dynastic rule for centuries, in modern times
this struggle has become highly intellectualized.
 Modern intellectual struggle against Western intellectual
inroads into the Muslim world

• Philosophical allegorical poetry

Muhammad
Iqbal • Later became a movement for the realization of
Pakistan as an independent sate.

• Produced a huge number of literature with an

Mawdudi, explicit (obvious) ideological orientation which
Hasan al- attracted the anguished (suffering) mind of the
Banna, Said Muslim ummah.
Qutb • Became cornerstone of their political movements
like Jama’a al Islamiya and Ikhwan al-Muslimin.
 Why author did criticize Ibn Khaldun?
• Our critique of Ibn Khaldun in the preceding pages was not meant to chastise him
for introducing a value-free sociology.
• Our main objection to him is that he did not feel the necessity of going beyond his
pure sociology.
• It is a fact that he had ample opportunity to do so himself but did not do so.
• Ibn Khaldun served as the supreme Qadi of the Maliki court in Egypt.
• He antagonized many circles in Egypt for his non-traditional approach to legal
problem.
• We are not against sociology which is seeking the principles of human nature,
human behavior and human organization.
• It has to be applied for the sake of the promotion of Islam within individuals,
around them in their societies, and between and among societies.
 Islamic sociology, like any other science, has two aspects through
which it has to proceed – “pure” and “applied”
The basic assumptions of pure or theoretical Islamic sociology
• Allah is the creator of the whole universe including man, and He has
The authority over everything that exists in it.
nature of • We reject assertions which replace Allah with what they call nature, for
the nature instance “according to the dictates of nature…”, “nature makes it
possible…” etc.
• Human nature may be outlined in terms of four characteristics which are
described in and may be derived directly from the Qur’an, which are:
The • 1. Man is made of opposites. In his make-up, Allah mixed “evil” with
nature of “good”.
man • 2. The existence in him of free-will, an ability to make decisions.
• 3. Man has been given the ability to learn and acquire knowledge.
• 4. Allah made him the best of all creations, even superior to the angels.
 The • Human society may be defined in terms of two constituent (essential)
nature of elements:
social • 1. A plurality of people, and
order • 2. The laws that they share and are supposed to follow.

• Not only is man caught in a dilemma within himself, the whole of human
history describes a dialectical progression and alteration between just
and unjust social orders in human society.
The • When a number of prophets set out to establish a just order, they
nature of always faced the threat of challenge and even annihilation.
human • Even after a prophet was able to establish such an order, his
history descendants soon forgot the true message and so contaminated it.
• Finally, came the last and the most comprehensive formula for human
social life – Islam – through the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon
him).