Nancy Roberts’ translation of Fathi Malkawi’s most recent study representsthe latest addition to the corpus of literature dealing with the Islamization ofKnowledge project. The author’s core argument is that a truly Islamic approachto the study of any phenomenon, whether biological, physical, or social,is definitively characterized by its inherent ability to incorporate both theadvances made in...Read More

This article deals with the issue of causality and its ethical status in al-Ghazali’s epistemological system, which is connected with the issue of Jabr and ikhtiyar (compulsion and choice); the issue of al-šabābiyya and tawakkul (causality and reliance), i.e., dependence on God and trust in him; and the issue of work. These issues are based...Read More

“Medical practice has been evidencebased since antiquity. What has changed is our understanding of what constitutes evidence”1 . How do we know that a particular treatment works? How can we measure the effectiveness of a certain drug? And how do we assess whether a medical or surgical procedure is better than an alternative one? These...Read More

This contribution starts a critical analysis and reconstruction of arguments in classical texts of Islamic theology (of the period AD 900-1100) from the viewpoint of the epistemological theory of argumentation. The main question of the analysis is whether these arguments can be reconstructed as being of one of the universal types of argument identified so...Read More