ABSTRACT
The first cardinal value of the Islamic worldview is the integration of God’s oneness in knowledge and the world-system, even in the minutest details, through monotheistic oneness (Tawhid). We refer to this primordial axiom as ‘the episteme’ in this chapter. The Qur’an says in this regard (96:1–5): “Read: In the name of your Lord Who created, created man from a clot. Read: And your Lord is the Most Bounteous, Who taught by the pen, taught man that which he knew not.” The early thinkers on the Qur’anic worldview delved deeply into the Qur’an and the meaning of its verses using the practices and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, referred to as the sunnah. This is followed in the Islamic epistemological practice by the discourse in reference to the episteme (shura by ijtihad) of the learned Islamic community to derive and establish meaning out of the Qur’anic verses. Such an exercise on the functional relationship between the Qur’an incorporating the sunnah and learned discourse on the diversities of the world-system cannot be completed in temporal experience. The Qur’an establishes this openness of the immanent search, discovery and evolution of knowledge without end. The Qur’an thus builds and explains the openness of evolutionary learning within and across the diversity of everything in terms of knowledge and its induction of the world-system in general and in specifics.
