The Contrast Between Islamic And Western Views of Knowledge
In previous lectures, I have argued that some explicit and implicit axioms built into a Western education conflict with Islamic ideas. Anyone who studies from western textbooks absorbs these ideas, which prevent the development of Islamic understanding. One of this group of ideas is an understanding of what intellectual academic discourse looks like. Conventions of western intellectual discourse are radically different from that of genuine Islamic discourse, as the above passage, common in Islamic texts, shows. This is not just window dressing or patchwork, but such sentiments genuinely affect the flow of the thoughts which go into the research. Before we start discussing what Islam says about economic issues, we must study what Islam has to say about knowledge, and the seeking of knowledge.