Meaning, Method and Social Science: A Realist Account

It is not unusual for Muslim social scientists to complain about the pressure to conform to non‐Islamic frameworks for understanding social phenomena because these typically Western patterns of rationality miss important elements of an Islamic social world and self‐understanding. This being true, the reasoning goes, what is provided is a distorted understanding of the Muslim social world and inadequate policies framed on a distorted understanding. M.A. Choudhury accurately characterizes this situation for economics, but it is applicable to the social sciences in general.