This study has two primary purposes. The first is to critically examine those research methods and methodological approaches, which are associated with mainstream scholarship, both in the classical Muslim and modern Western scientific traditions. The examination aims not only at understanding methods which influenced the development of Muslim and Western traditions, but also at assessing the extent to which they can be incorporated into a modern Islamic methodology capable of responding to the social and intellectual challenges of modern society. Therefore, outlining an alternative Islamic methodology is the second purpose of this study. For today’s Muslim scholars, two sets of methods aiming at understanding and guiding human action are in use. The first set comes from Western tradition. While these methods are helpful in analyzing social interaction, they present Muslim intellectuals with a fundamental problem, namely, that they do not recognize Islamic Revelation as a proper source of scientific knowledge. The problem is compounded by the fact that as Western scholarship rejects Revelation, it continues to espouse many of the values and ontological assumptions connected with Western religions and cultures.

The second set of methods available for Muslim researchers today was developed by classical Muslim scholars. Classical Muslim methods are primarily concerned with understanding the Divine Text, applying its injunctions for guiding individual action, and restructuring social interaction. Classical Muslim scholars showed, however, little interest in studying social actions which do not fit into the Revealed norms. And while early Muslim scholars studied history, they did not do that to discover the laws and forces of history, but only to be inspired by the personality of historical actors. Apart from Ibn Khaldun’s impressive work, al-Muqaddimah, Muslim historians by and large were interested in highlighting the personal struggle and accomplishments of military generals and political leaders. Yet understanding the laws and forces governing the evolution of history is a must for those who would like to comprehend its happenings, and thus to become active participants in shaping historical events and restructuring social relations in ways that bring actual practices into conformity with the principles of truth and equity.

Given the nature of the difficulties facing contemporary Muslim scholarship outlined above, this study purports to overcome the shortcomings of both classical Muslim and modern Western methods by bringing into a synthesis some of the elements developed in the wombs of the two traditions. The synthesis is presented in a unified model outlined in chapter 7. However, the unified model, while building on the achievements of Muslim and Western traditions, is not concerned with bringing harmony between the two traditions, but aspires to integrate the knowledge received from revelation with the one gained from human experience.