Transformations in the ‘Islamiization of knowledge’ project: A reading in the contribution of Abdel Hamid Abu Sulayman

Abstract

This study addresses the biography of Abdel Hamid Abu Suleiman, and his scientific path. It also focuses on its scientific formation, both in terms of the epistemological vision or in terms of the critical approach that distinguished it. The study also highlights his contribution from within the institution of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) in Washington in the processes of Islamic intellectual and methodological reform; by recourse to explanatory concepts based on the (Ethical vision), and the concepts of (ISTIKHLAF), (AADL), and (IAMAR). The study explain   his contribution, along with Ismail Raji Al-Farouqi and Taha Jaber Al-Alwani, in establishing the  Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS), to link Islamic sciences and contemporary social sciences, and crystallize the new thesis of contemporary Islamic thought, under the name (Islamic Knowledge) ; A thesis based on philosophy and criticism, from within the equation (the integration of the world of the unseen and the world of testimony), or what I call referred to later  in other writings: (combining the two readings). The study shows how Abdel Hamid Abu Suleiman sought to rid the thesis of contemporary Islamic thought from the dynamic and political tendency, by taking advantage of the scientific efforts of the Malaysian thinker Muhammad Naqib al-Attas, and the Sudanese thinker Muhammad Abu al-Qasim Haj Hamad, for any framework of the thesis: (universal monotheism) versus (religious theology) ), and (nihilistic condition). The study also presented, in this context, the effort of Abd el-Hamid Abu Suleiman in overcoming the crisis situation that the classical paradigm (forensic sciences) reached, with its tools, concepts and history.