Talk explains how Western Social Sciences Originated with Rejection of Christianity, and are a replacement for the functions of religion in the public sphere. To understand this requires a deep examination of European History. Since Social Science is a European religion, it is not compatible with Islam. A Sketch of how to build an alternative is presented.

1. History:
Mother of All Social Sciences
Dr. Asad Zaman
Lecture at IBA History Society
20th Feb 2023: 11:30 – 1:00
Download These Slides from: http://bit.ly/SShist

2. Highly Condensed Talk: Summarizes
Enormous Amounts of Material
Fruit of two decades of thinking and research
Message to me from Farheena:
Our events are attended by a diverse crowd … but most of the students are not well
versed with Islamic intellectual history, western philosophy, or the liberal-secular
intellectual discourse. It would be delightful to introduce them to these topics but in a
way that matches the level of the students.
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3. Why Are There Dramatic Wealth Disparities?

4. Why did the West forge ahead of the Rest?

5. How Can We Also Become Rich, like them?

6. Is Development Just More Wealth?

7. Pursue Wealth, Putting Future At Risk?

8. Do You Discuss The Big
Questions?
Why Not?
A set of answers is ASSUMED, without discussion.
Where do these assumed answers come from?
History!

9. The Little Questions
What should I do with my life?
What to study?
Where to plan to live?
What career to pursue?
Who to marry? When to marry?
Career Versus Family Versus Larger Social
Concerns

10. Answers to the Little Questions are shaped by
our answers to the Big Questions – BUT, We are
not aware of this shaping.

11. Our History Shapes
Our Thoughts!
Capitalism: Built on Pursuit of Wealth.
Orientalism: Europe conquered the globe. Superiority Complex in the
colonizers, and corresponding inferiority complex in the colonized.
Market Society: Everything is for sale. Consumption is the source of
pleasure.

12. How Can We Free Ourselves?

13. Think More Deeply About
the Big Questions
Learn Who You Are!
http://bit.ly/azwya
What is my identity?
What is the meaning of life = What is the
BEST way I can spend my life?
Is it really to accumulate the largest
amount of wealth, and then die?

14. The Most Important Questions:
Islamic Perspective

15. Knowledge Leads to World
Leadership:
Read, in the name of thy Lord …
Taught man that which he knew not.
Knowledge, given by God, transformed
ignorant and backward Bedouin into World
Leaders.
This Knowledge created a Civilization which
enlightened the world for more than 1000
years.
See: What the World Lost Due to the
Decline of the Islamic Civilization
http://bit.ly/azrdm

16. The Battle of
Epistemologies
WEST: The most valuable knowledge has been produced by the West over the
past three centuries.
EAST: The final message of God to mankind is complete and perfect guidance
for all times. Knowledge given by God is superior to any knowledge mankind is
capable of producing.
This is what faith requires, but all empirical evidence points STRONGLY in the
opposite direction.

17. All of my work is based
on ONE insight:
The message of the Quran is just as revolutionary
today as it was 14 centuries ago!
The message is deep and sophisticated, and does
not reveal itself to those who do not approach it
with due respect.
As I absorbed it slowly, over more than a decade, I
came to realize that EVERYTHING I had learnt
during my Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford University
was WRONG!

18. What was this knowledge,
which changed the world?
Does this knowledge have the same power today?
Vast Majority say: NO!
Today we need to learn from West, to make
progress!
Past three centuries of knowledge advances in West
have little or nothing in common with message of
Quran and Hadeeth, and our intellectual tradition.
Universities around the globe teach, indirectly, that
the message of the Quran is not relevant in the
modern world.

19. The Central
Contrast
WEST: Science, or knowledge of the external world, is the most important kind
of knowledge.
EAST: Knowledge of our internal world – emotions, spirit, desires, thoughts –
heart, soul, nafs, aql – is the most important kind of knowledge.
Only the second kind of knowledge can teach us how to live!

20. You are the most precious
of God’s Creations!
We have created the human being in the
best of forms
And reduced him to the lowest of the low
You can rise higher than the angels,
or become worse than the beasts.

21. How to develop our
potential for excellence?
And He taught Adam the names - all of them.
We said to the angels, "Prostrate before Adam"; so they prostrated.
Knowledge, given by God, makes us worthy of prostration
by Angels.
Say, "Are those who know equal to those who do not know?"
Those with knowledge are not equal of those without
knowledge.

22. Lessons Which MIT Did
Not Teach Me!
• Essential Information about life-skills, was not
taught.
• What was taught – indirectly – was an extremely
toxic set of values.
• See: http://bit.ly/mit4az

23. Everything at Stanford Ph.D.
Econ was wrong?
Surely, you are exaggerating!!
NO!
Modern Economic Theory – as represented in textbooks in
use for teaching around the world – is not worth the paper
it is written on.
Many Heterodox Economists – NOT represented in
textbooks – have valuable insights into the workings of real
world economics.
Modern Economic Theory is a NEW theory
DISCONTINUOUS with its own intellectual heritage. It
emerged in early 20th Century.
Lionel Robbins REDEFINED the subject matter of Economics
as being the Science of Scarcity – Previously it was about
material well-being.

24. Why is modern economics completely wrong?
How can we rebuild economics correctly?

26. Edward Said: Orientalism –
Game Changer
http://bit.do/azori
By early 20th Century, Europeans had colonized 90% of
the world.
This gave them a superiority complex.
And the colonized, an inferiority complex.
The means of creating these complexes is HISTORY.
See: “Fabricated History: The Deadliest Weapon”
http://bit.ly/AZDeadly

27. Erasing the Muslims: The
Greek Strategy
See: http://bit.ly/AZGreek
Schumpeter: The Great Gap: 500 Years of zero advance in
economics!
The Muslim conquests of the 7th century shattered the Roman and
Persian Empires.
Byzantium entered the Dark Ages, reduced to a peripheral power.
Dark Ages of Europe end in 13th Century, with reconquest of Al-
Andalus. With translations of thousands of books in Toledo, the light
of Islam reached Europe.
BUT: All Muslims advances were dated back to Greeks, or forward to
European copiers. Copernicus copied from Ibnul Shatir!

28. Battle of “Science” &
Religion: Two Centuries!
Translations of Islamic Works Conflict with Catholic Teachings!
Church imposes strong restrictions. Censorship, Approval
required. The INQUISITION tortures those accused of
unorthodox views.
Copernicus’ friend, Scultetus, was named a heretic and
underwent ten years of trial, imprisonment, and torture in
Rome.
Tensions created by suppression of new knowledge
eventually rip apart the Church into two factions.
Protestants and Catholics fight extremely violent and hugely
destructive wars for more than a century – Game of Thrones.

29. Birth of the Social Sciences
http://bit.ly/IR3owss
The Scholastics: Social theory based on the Bible.
Religion leads to perpetual warfare. It is necessary to rebuild
social theory on secular grounds.
First of the new social sciences: Political Science. Hobbes: State of
nature is war of all against all (personal experience). Powerful
State needed to control all.
Second: Economics
Karl Polanyi: The Great Transformation: Political and Economic
Origins of Our Times.

30. Trauma of Loss of Faith

31. Three Responses to
Meaningless Universe
Existentialism: We create meaning – Beyond
Good and Evil.
Absurdism: We cannot create meaning, but we
can and must learn to live with the Absurdity –
meaninglessness – of life. Optimism about
meaninglessness.
Nihilism: Camus: The only serious philosophical
question is Suicide. Pessimism about
meaninglessness.

32. Must we accept Meaninglessness?
• Does REASON proves the non-existence of God?
• What is REASON?
• Serious problems cannot be solved at the level at which
they are raised.
• Instead of examining arguments for and against the
existence of God, examine the HISTORY OF IDEAS:
• How and Why did Europeans reject God?

33. European Transition to Secular Modernity
How did European lose faith in God?

34. Long and Complex Story
• Constantine imposes Trinitarian Christianity on Roman Empire.
• Burning of Library of Alexandria – all non-Biblical knowledge
banned.
• Dark Ages of Europe begin
• Rise of Islam: Religion built on the search for knowledge.
• Al-Andalus – Seven Centuries of advances in knowledge.
• Re-conquest of Spain.
• Translation Project of Toledo – thousands of Arabic texts
translated into Latin and other European languages. End of
Dark Ages.

35. Two Centuries of Battles of Knowledge
1300 to 1500
• Catholic Church fights tooth and nail to suppress influx of
philosophies contrary to Church dogma. The Inquisition.
• Martin Luther starts the reformation 1517. Church splits
into two factions.
• Extremely violent battles between Protestants and
Catholics culminate in the Thirty Years War – 1618 – 1648

36. A Century of Religious Wars
1507 -1641
The Thirty Years' War is thought to have claimed
between 4 and 12 million lives. Around 450,000 people
died in combat.
Disease and famine took the lion's share of the death
toll. Estimates suggest that 20% of Europe's people
perished, with some areas seeing their population fall by
as much as 60%
Deep Effects on European Psyche and Thought.

37. Marginalization of Religion
Tawney: Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
Religion, ceasing to be the master-interest of mankind,
dwindles into a department of life with boundaries
European Transition to Secular Thought: http://bit.ly/AZq5sk
The Scholastics developed economics, politics, and social
theory on basis of Christian teachings and the Bible: Love of
Money is root of all evil. (Bible)
This was abandoned, and replaced by a secular approach:
Lack of Money is root of all evil! (Bernard Shaw)

38. Social Sciences: Replacement
for Christianity
Ontology: There is no God, Judgment Day, Afterlife
Universe and Life created by meaningless
accidents.
Purpose of life is pursuit of pleasure, power, profits.
Society is jungle of fierce competition, with survival
of fittest being the only moral principle.
Key Transformation: Society as a community with a
common goal  “There is no society”: War of all
against all.

39. Islamic Alternatives to
Social Science
Since Social Science is the religion of the
West, based on rejection of God, Judgment
Day, and afterlife, it is not compatible with
Islam.
Rebuilding Social Sciences on Islamic
Foundations:
Part 1: http://bit.ly/AZrss1
Part 2: http://bit.ly/AZrss2
Decolonizing Social Sciences: From
Uniplexity to Multiplexity by Prof. Dr.
Recep Şentürk

40. Uloom-ul-Umran: Based on Ibn-e-Khaldun
http://bit.ly/AZUUU
Communities are created by a collective
identity.
Communities are drivers of social
change.
Contrast with
Margaret Thatcher: There is no such
thing as society!
Secular Society consists of individuals
each pursuing individual goals.
The ONLY possibility for collective action
comes at government level.

41. The Impossible State:
Wael Hallaq
Islamists – or Political Islam – ACCEPT the Eurocentric thesis
that collective action is possibly only through nation-state.
The European conceptual frameworks underlying the nation-
state are both self-contradictory and in deep conflict with
Islamic concepts.
The Shari’a stands above all authority, and will be enforced
even against the majority and against the King. In contrast,
the state is the supreme and sole source of authority.
Attempt to create an Islamic society through authority of
nation-state are bound to fail. One cannot use un-Islamic
means to create an Islamic outcome.

42. 3-Dimensional Framework for
Social Change
An Islamic Approach to Humanities. JKAU: Islamic
Economics, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2014,
SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3066267
Normative: Ideal Society spelled out by Shari’ah, and by
the perfect exemplar: Our Prophet Mohammad SAW.
Positive: Accurate Description and Analysis of Current
Ground Realities.
Transformative: Strategies for moving towards the
normative ideals.
http://bit.ly/AZ3DIE
3-D Framework for Islamic Economics

43. Human Agency:
Theories Shape History
Boonjubun, Chaitawat and Zaman, Asad, How Theories
Shape, and are Shaped by History (December 1, 2022).
Chapter in Karl Polanyi Handbook (Forthcoming), SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=4291027
Human beings are not robots, subject to mathematical
laws. Theories are used to analyze, and respond to,
events. Which theory is use depends on class struggles,
and other factors, and is not deterministic.
Study of history cannot be insulated from human
agency, as in science.

44. Islamic Economics:
Transforming Knowledge
The Crisis in Islamic Economics: http://bit.ly/cie1iok Uncritical
acceptance of Western economics led to confusion and
stagnation.
Islamic Economics: The Polar Opposite of Capitalist Economics
– spells out the deep differences between Capitalism and
Islam.
Ongoing set of lectures on Islamic Economics – see:
http://bit.ly/na2ie First lecture: Gratitude, Contentment, and
Trust – alternatives to the homo economicus behavior bases
of greed, insatiable wants, and distrust.

45. Links to Related Materials
For free ongoing online course on Islamic Economics, join my weekly
mailing list at: http://bit.ly/AZIEML
Islamic Worldview Blog: http://bit.ly/AZiwv
Download these slides from: http://bit.ly/SShist