Muhammad Arsyad Al-Banjari who lived from 1710 to 1812 in Borneo, Indonesia, applied a model of integrating uses of the Banjarese tradition into Islamic Jurisprudence based on a dialectical constitution of qiyās, the legal argumentation theory for parallel reasoning and analogy, he learned from the Shāfi‘ī-school of jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh). Our paper focuses in the model of integration proposed and practiced by Al-Banjari, a rational debate grounded on a dynamic view on legal systems. We will illustrate the method with the (...) help of two different kinds of qiyās deployed by Al-Banjari in order to argue for the rejection of some traditional Banjarese offering-rituals for avoiding disease or calamities (manyanggar and mambuang pasilih), and for the acceptance of the use of consuming the traditional drink called lahang made of the juice of sugar-palm. As our dialogical reconstruction shows, the development of the debates, particularly the first one, is quite sophisticated, with a Banjarese opponent that does not surrender easily to the rejection of his use of those rituals. (shrink)

The Arabic-Islamic tradition is founded on the following new epistemic attitude that reinvents knowledge: to learn from the contributions of previous civilisations through the systematic survey of all extant scientific works; to contribute to the further development of knowledge by linking it, through usefulness, to practice and the practical need of society; to facilitate its learning for younger generations and its transmission to future civilizations since it is conceived not as a finished product but as an ongoing process. The worldwide (...) development of the reinvented knowledge has led to its universalisation and the rapid expansion of mathematics has particularly and led to the complete de-hellinisation of the Greek conception of science and philosophy. (shrink)