Christianity would not be without its Ṣūfīs like Saint Theresa of Avila...

Christianity would not be without its Ṣūfīs like Saint Theresa of Avila, San Juan de la Cruz, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Master Eckhardt, John Tauler, and Henry Suso and “martyrs” like Saint Joan of Arc. As misguided as it may be, this practice of imposing a Western religious framework on the Islamic faith has been done with impunity so much so that authors have not even seen the need to justify their extrapolations, to confirm their correctness, or to consider their relevance.

When we first wrote the article, we focused our criticism on Western Orientalism. Now, however, we have extended our critique--and most justifiably so--to the social and political sciences in general. In recent decades, these two fields have erroneously employed certain scientific and non-scientific terms. This includes terms like “fundamentalism” which the social and political sciences apply to anything in the Islamic world which seems reactionary or conservative.

In fact, the half-religious, half-political phenomenon they are observing has nothing to do with “fundamentalism.” According to its original meaning, “fundamentalism” denotes a dry literalist spirit, a concept which is completely alien to the Islamic tradition. As a result, the application of the derogatory term “fundamentalism” to Islām is a distortion of the true nature of things. It reflects an attempt to impose a label by lexical manipulation.

To make matters worse, the application of the term “fundamentalism” gives a false impression of Islām to Westerners. Rather than presenting Islām as it is, they present it as it is not. [^2] Sacred tradition--the source of all spirituality--and religion, which is its outer aspect--cannot be subjected to the same scrutiny as the pure sciences.

One cannot approach a spiritual tradition like a physicist deals with gravity, a biologist deals with life, a meteorologist deals with the climate or an entomologist deals with insects. Studying religious tradition is not the same as observing natural phenomena. For the sociologist, political scientist or philosopher, it is impossible to split religious phenomenon into bits and pieces with the same callous indifference a coroner employs to dissect a cadaver.

According to Positivism, such an aloof attitude is natural and to be expected of any scientist. While the social sciences are not pure sciences, researchers in these fields also focus on observation.