The Islamization of Knowledge: Yesterday and Today (Occasional Paper) This paper offers a number of valuable insights gained from a long engagement with Islamic as well as global issues, with traditional as well as contemporary concerns. It not only surveys the field along with the powers and challenges at work, but also charts a way out of the present impasse. More immediately, it offers an updated • review of the progress of the Islamization of Knowledge project and a timely clarification of the very concept itself. Clearly, that concept, though responsible for generating ... worldwide debate and action, has been so often misinterpreted and/or inflated. The gradational nature of the Islamizing project is all too obvious, and was never far from the minds of the authors of the 1982 declaration. It would certainly have been ~ 1:-! juvenile to think otherwise. And yet there is a need now ., - to stress, as the present paper does, the ambitious (but also imperative) nature of the enterprise. For, despite the highly commendable effort invested in further elaboration and, in some brave instances, attempted implementation of the concept, the process of the Islamization of Knowledge remains at an intial, some might even say, prenatal stage. Much work needs to be done, many talents galvanized and resources pooled, institutions set up or reorganized, etc., before a truly genuine and sustainable realization of the concept can be said to have begun. Such a realistic vision needs to accompany and inform every stage of the way. To be lulled into a false or premature sense of achievement is a costly setback at a time when standing idly by for a day may have serious consequences for, decades to come. Taha Jabir Al-Alwani is a graduate of Al-Azhar University and an internationally known scholar and expert in the fields of Islamic legal theory, jurisprudence (fiqh), and usul al-fiqh. He is also the author of numerous works and a Member of the OIC Islamic Fiqh Academy. (2011)

Paperback: 978-1-56564-058-0 / Price: $3.99 eBook: 979-8-89193-202-9 / Price: $1.95 Size: 6x9 inches Pages: 50 Year of Publication: 1995