Islamic studies, unlike Islamic sciences, express a holistic framework
regarding Islam. It encompasses Islamic sciences but is not limited to
them; it perceives all areas related to Islamic history and society as a
whole. Within this framework, Islamic studies have predominantly
been handled through a text-centered approach from the past to the
present, and religious knowledge has largely been evaluated within
the internal logic and methodological boundaries of classical sciences.
However, reading the phenomenon of religion solely through the
texts of classical sciences makes it difficult to comprehend its historical,
social, and human dimensions holistically. Without considering
the social manifestations of beliefs, their reflections in the individual’s
inner world, cultural continuities, spatial organizations, and economic
relations, the subject of Islamic studies to an in-depth analysis remains
limited. One way to overcome this limitation is the application of the
methods and data of modern social sciences to Islamic studies. Today, a
horizontal literature aiming for this goal has emerged. This work, titled
Social Sciences and Islamic Studies, as a product of the effort to overcome
this aforementioned limitation, aims to rethink Islamic studies
within an interdisciplinary perspective. It intends to evaluate the fundamental
approaches of the horizontally existing studies in the literature
on a vertical ground. The book, consisting of thirteen chapters, offers
a perspective by addressing the relations religion establishes with
different branches of science within a systematic integrity.
The studies in the book examine different contact points of Islamic studies
on a broad intellectual ground ranging from psychology to sociology,
anthropology to archaeology, geography to history, art history to the
history of religions, and logic to philosophy, law, and economics. Each
discipline addresses Islam from different perspectives in line with its
own theoretical accumulation and methodological possibilities; thus, it
is revealed that Islamic studies is not an area limited only to normative
provisions or a theological framework. The multi-layered relationships
between human, society, culture, space, and institution are opened to
discussion on different levels throughout the work; the boundaries of
the field are redefined within a broader and more holistic perspective.
Moving beyond being a compilation that brings together interdisciplinary
contributions, the work investigates the possibility of new questions
that can be directed toward Islamic studies and re-evaluates established
assumptions with a critical eye. This ground of interaction
established between classical knowledge and the modern scientific approach
does not leave the researcher in a position of merely conveying
existing information; it directs them to a practice of thinking that questions,
reconstructs, and takes methodological diversity into account.
Keywords: Islamic Studies; Social Sciences; Humanities; Interdisciplinarity;
Method; Interpretation; Analysis; Comparison; Interaction; Social
Context; Knowledge.