Tabah Research’s aim is to re-examine and rearticulate aspects of the Islamic intellectual tradition, through studies that clarify contemporary intellectual problems and help readers find answers to them within the traditional Islamic sciences as transmitted by the ʿulamāʾ. This work proceeds from an intellectual order shaped by the first principles of Islamic cosmology and ontology, and rests on the theological doctrines of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah.
The division’s research is grounded in the traditional sciences that together form the intellectual and ethical method of Islamic thought. Tabah Research works both within these sciences and on them. It draws on them as the basis and method of its inquiry, independent of strictly academic research frameworks in its values and principles, while making use of their instruments where these serve. At the same time, it works to develop them as methods of research in their own right.
Its studies are of two kinds: theoretical work, which develops the concepts and methods needed to discuss Islam and contemporary questions, and applied work, which brings those findings to bear on specific problems.
Papers
Extended academic studies making an original contribution
Essays
Shorter studies on ideas, presented without full scholarly apparatus
Analytical Briefs
Background and analysis on contemporary events and debates
Memoranda
Brief overviews of a question or event
Speeches
The text of research presented as a lecture
The division also convenes conferences, seminars and research circles that gather scholars from different disciplines around a single question.
This work is addressed to researchers, and to scholars and students of the traditional Islamic sciences, particularly those working where the tradition meets the questions of the present, and to those who carry such scholarship into teaching and public life.
To serve as a point of reference for scholars working on Islam and contemporary issues, treating each question at the level of its intellectual roots rather than its surface.
