Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq’s draft article “Islam and Critical Thinking: The Legacy of Ibn Khaldun” (September 2017) offers a timely and compelling intervention into contemporary debates concerning epistemology, intellectual heritage, and educational reform in the Muslim world. Situated at the intersection of Islamic intellectual history, historiography, and critical pedagogy, the article presents a forceful argument for reclaiming and revitalizing a tradition of critical inquiry exemplified by the 14th-century scholar Ibn Khaldun. Farooq positions Ibn Khaldun not merely as a historical figure of scholarly interest but as a pivotal intellectual whose methodological innovations remain urgently relevant for addressing what many scholars—including Abdulhamid Abu Sulayman and Tariq Ramadan—have diagnosed as a “crisis of thought” in contemporary Muslim societies. The article begins by contextualizing the perceived tension between Islam and critical thinking, a discourse often marred by orien...
...in his own words and in the words of others who read his works
