It also looks at the intellectual changes that began in the...

It also looks at the intellectual changes that began in the nineteenth century and reached their peak in the twentieth. During this process we will look closely at the high status enjoyed by the social sciences, and the role they have played in society, especially in the West. To delineate the core of this relationship (i.e..

between the social sciences and religion) I envisage the following questions to be relevant to our topic: What relationship is there between the social sciences and philosophy in the context of Islamic civilization? What relationship is there between the social sciences and the Islamic sciences? What type of relationships do the social sciences and religion enjoy in the context of Western thought? What relationship is there between the social sciences and values in general?

What is the future of the relationship between the social sciences and religion overall? I would like to quickly draw your attention to the fact that the answers to these questions require long discussions and exhaustive research.

My aim is only to raise these issues to be debated amongst the specialists, in the hope that Muslim scholars specializing in the field of social sciences would, on the one hand, provide us with ways to get out of the Lizard's hole; and on the other would keep us from erring into nonsensical myth, delusion and obscure Sufi 'theopathetic locutions' and babble talk; all of which do not provide Muslims with the framework with which to surmount long centuries of underdevelopment.

This brief study is, actually, an introduction to auto-criticism of academic theses that are brought forward today by Muslim scholars and specialists in social sciences. This criticism is not aiming to underestimate these efforts, nor is it aiming to refute them. On the contrary, these steps are taken in an endeavor to try to urge those endowed with enthusiasm to increase their efforts towards producing more scientific and practical alternatives, to enable us to diagnose our shortcomings.

Also for them to suggest ways of advancement to us, rather than us being led up the garden path and being presented with empty slogans, which only cause us to stray further away from our final aspirations and goals. Aspirations and goals can be shown to be within arm's reach, when in fact what is really being shown is a mirage, and only a mirage.