Where we are (headed): Knowledge, Social Cohesion, and Public Value in Islamic Public Administration

Abstract

This article addresses issues explored in the research project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and published in the book, ‘Islamic Public Value: theory, practice, and administration of indigenous cooperative institutions,’ edited by Wolfgang Drechsler, Salah Chafik and Rainer Kattel. This special edition of Halduskultuur, is another of several outputs from the work. This article engages with a range of observations regarding the role of Islam in historical, cultural and political terms in public administration. We begin by asking, ‘How do we know what we know?,’ and link it to the growing competition to Western Public Administration posed by other perspectives and understandings, in particular the wider concept of Islamic Public Value from a range of countries, comprising the world’s largest Muslim country (Indonesia), some of the smaller European Islamic populations (including Kosova), and, a range of post-Soviet Islamic republics. The work in this research project, including in the book, returns the notions of context and temporality to the study and understanding of Islamic Public Administration; the history and impact of Islamic governance on Europe and the rest of the world especially from the time of the capture of Damascus onwards and the halt of the eastward expansion of Arab armies after the battle of the river Talas in 751. Though trade along the Silk Road continued to expand Islamic influence. As Ruskin Bond observed, ‘The past is always with us, for it feeds the present,’ The work that has emerged from this project explores and expands our knowledge of the interaction between different systems and cultures in a refreshing and instructive way.