ABSTRACT
When, in the mid-1980s, Holsti (1985: 127) made the claim that international theory barely existed outside Anglophone countries, perhaps he was asserting bias, parading as universal, towards the European experience with state formation, power and influence, and a particularly Anglo-American preference for empiricism (knowledge inferred from observable characteristics of reality) and for materialism (causation sought in material factors). The expanding literature on the subject ever since has been able to clarify that Western-based international theory does not necessarily fit the reality and experiences of other spaces. In this chapter, we shall further examine whether empiricism and materialism are also the only possible and acceptable methodology for organizing and processing data. If, as Acharya and Buzan ponder, there is disjuncture between Western international relations theory (IRT) and the universality of human experience, can one use the Islamic worldview, and by extension the Islamic world, as the basis for generalizations that could provide alternative optics for theorization?
