The Methodology of Islamic Economic and Socio-scientific Inquiry

This paper AU :1 searches for the universal epistemological foundations of socioscientific theory. Within this quest there is no parochial domain of the Islamic, for the Islamic idea finds itself in methodological, consistent, explanatory, and applied and inferential ways in the domain of what Barrow (1991) refers to as ‘‘everything.’’ Thus, the methodology that is inherent and is to be introduced here, but with the extensive details left elsewhere (Choudhury, 2011), is not an isolated one for emulation by what we refer to as misnomer – Islamic economics, finance, society, and the socio-scientific order; in other words the ensemble of ‘‘everything’’ (Hubner, 1985). The methodology of the Qur’an far from being a parochial domain is indeed the central epistemic commonness of all the sciences – of ‘‘everything.’’ Is this a dogmatic claim or a reality? On the methodological front the reality of the statement is proved by the attributes of universality and uniqueness in methodological content combined by its methodical application in ‘‘everything.’’ Besides, the derivation of the Qur’anic methodology and application in the concept of ‘‘everything’’ and its economic, finance, and society subset arises strictly from the Qur’an. These are not derived from a personal domain of thought or from the realm of rationalism. The methodology then drives all the experiential consequences, not vice versa. 1