The papers in this special issue and the one preceding it have their roots in a panel titled “Ethnography, Misrepresentations of Islam, and Advocacy,” which Timothy Daniels and Maryem Zaman organized for the 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam. Submissions are subject to a blind peer review process.

This issue of AJISS opens with a guest editorial by Louay Safi, who reflects on the relationship between scholarship and social engagement while considering the remarkable career of his friend Sulayman Nyang (d. 2018). The first research article of this issue, Youssef J. Carter’s “Black Mus­limness Mobilized: A Study of West African Sufism in Diaspora,” argues that a powerful sense of diasporic identification and solidarity is cultivated by Mustafawi sufis in South Carolina and Senegal. The second article, Abdullah Al-Shami and Kathrine Bullock’s “Islamic Perspectives on Basic Income,” suggests that, although distinct from Western rationales, Islamic concepts and ethical-legal mechanisms have much in common with basic income programs. A review essay by Charles E. Butterworth contextualizes and considers the educational reform project of an ‘integration of knowledge’. Following the book reviews, Enes Karić’s “Goethe, His Era and Islam” traces the complex relationship between Goethe and Islam, as examined in recent literature in Bosnia and beyond. Finally, closing out this new issue of AJISS, Altaf Hussain’s obituary acts as a tribute to the life and work of Dr. Nyang.

Professor Timothy Daniels and his colleagues, Meryem Zaman, Robert Hefner, and James Edmonds, chose AJISS for the publication of their important and timely research. This issue showcases leading and emerging anthropologists who have come together to address the layers of misrepresentation and marginalization that various Muslim groups experience. Each article has been independently reviewed and are ably introduced by Professor Timothy Daniels. Finally, AJISS' Editorial Team takes this opportunity to invite scholars of Islam as well as those of Muslim societies focused on Islamic thought and Muslim practice to consider submitting their collected papers to AJISS for special issues.

This issue begins with an editorial on humanistic education and Islam by the journal editor, Ovamir Anjum. It then features two research articles: Kareem Rosshandler’s “A Review of Contemporary Arabic Scholarship on the Use of Isrā’īliyyāt for Interpreting the Qur’an” is an important exploration of how modern Arabophone Muslim exegetes employ Israelite narratives in their commentaries. The second article, Abbas Ahsan’s “Quine’s Ontology and the Islamic Tradition,” is a meticulous philosophical treatment of a fundamental point: whether naturalist philosophy, particularly in its Quinean form, is commensurable with an absolutely transcendent notion of God as expressed in certain dominant theological traditions of Islam. A review essay on the second edition of Jonathan Brown's celebrated book Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World precedes eight book reviews. Finally, in a refreshing and provocative essay, “Islam in English,” Oludamini Ogunnaike and Mohammed Rustom make a case for new vocabulary that could express, not merely describe, Islam in English.

The Reform in Higher Education in Muslim Societies is in sum a paradigm shift in perspective driven by important considerations including the aims of education itself. It may require reforming existing disciplines, inventing new ones, as well as working in conjunction with current knowledge(s) and discourses by taking effective account of the ethical, spiritual norms of Muslim society, the guiding principles that it operates under, which in turn mark the underlying basis of its makeup and spiritual identity. Rather than creating divisions, reform of Higher Education in Muslim Societies recognizes the plurality and diversity of the modern networked world, and seeks to replace sterile and uniform approaches to knowledge with a broader and more creative understanding of reality as lived on different soils and different cultures. Moderation, balance and effective communication are paramount features of the underlying philosophy.