Uloom-ul-Umran vs Eurocentric Social Science

This is section 4.1 of?A New Approach to Islamic?Economics ; it explains the key methodological differences between our Islamic approach and the conventional Eurocentric approach to social science.

The approach to the study of economics adopted in this course is radically different from that of conventional courses around the globe. Our perspective can be labeled as “Uloom-ul-Umran”, which is the study of how societies change over time. We will follow the methodology first created by Ibn-e-Khaldun for this purpose. It is historical and qualitative, as opposed to mathematical and quantitative.

For more information, see Uloom-ul-Umran: An Islamic Approach to Western Social Sciences –?https://bit.ly/AZUUU ??We will describe it in greater detail later, after first describing the Western methodology for economics.

Battle of Methodologies:

A battle of methodologies took place in Europe, where this natural historical and qualitative methodology was replaced by a quantitative and mathematical methodology that currently dominates. For more details see: Method or Madness??https://bit.ly/WEAmom ?BRIEFLY: A century of religious wars led to the rejection of religion as a basis for organizing society. Social Science emerged as an alternative. The rejection of religion led to its replacement by “science” as the sole valid source of knowledge. The scientific method was to be applied to the study of human society in “social science”.

Consequences of the “scientific” approach:?

Science is the study of the external world. Objective, factual knowledge was prioritized. Internal, subjective experiences were no longer regarded as knowledge. Our internal experience is “subjective”; it cannot be studied scientifically. This knowledge was discarded by economists bent on using the scientific method. The?unobservable utility of consumption (an internal feeling of pleasure) was replaced by the observable choices we make. Christian morality was replaced by rationality. Rationality Axioms were used to define behavior, in a way?not related to our internal subjective experience of the world.

These axioms are built on the rejection of God, Afterlife, and Judgement Day. It is not rational to believe in the unseen. They depict human behavior to be the maximization of pleasure. Also, humans are animals, engaged in cut-throat competition, governed only by survival of the fittest.

The Alternative: An Islamic Methodology

Reject Axiomatic Behavior theory: This is wrong both normatively and empirically. See: The Strong Conflict Between Human Behavior and Economic Theory:?https://bit.ly/AZconflict . We?start with an Islamic Theory of Human Behavior. Great strides have been made in Islamic Psychology. For a recent summary, see Abdallah Rothman:?Developing a Model of Islamic Psychology and Psychotherapy?Islamic Theology and Contemporary Understandings of Psychology –?Routledge 2021.

The model of human behavior, developed by articulating the conceptual frameworks within the Islamic intellectual heritage, can be diagrammed as follows:

Concluding Remarks:

A theory of human behavior is FUNDAMENTAL to the construction of social sciences. Excluding subjective human experience as “unscientific” leads to a dramatically wrong picture of human behavior. Islamic intellectual heritage offers a rich and complex understanding of human behavior, which can be used to create an alternative theory of economics, and also rebuild the social sciences. The Key Difference: Modern Economics is the theory of the spiritually stunted Nafs-e-Ammara; Islam’s Gift is an Economy of Spiritual Progress. See:?https://bit.ly/AZgift