Islamic doctrinalism:
The person best placed to define this term is Dr Muhsin Abd al-Hamid, who was the first to bring it to prominence and wrote Islamic Doctrinalism and Civilisational Change for that purpose. He began by defining the term: “In recent years, a number of Islamic writers have used ‘doctrinalism’ to denote Islam’s positions concerning the universe and its Creator, life and humanity: matters relating to universals rather than particulars.
In truth, in addition to this word conveying its meaning linguistically, it can become a technical term that fulfils what Islamic writers intended by the expression ‘Islamic thought’, which we rejected in the sense in which it was used for ‘revelation’, the Qur’an and the Sunnah.
It also gives us a distinctive word that prevents us from using the foreign word ‘ideology’[1] to mean Islamic foundations and universals.
Someone may ask: why do we not use ‘Islamic creed’ to denote the meaning we intend, and so dispense with the other terms?
We answer: ‘Islamic creed’ is a term used since early times that encompasses only theology, prophethood, the hereafter, and divine judgement and decree, whereas we want a more comprehensive term. ‘Islamic doctrinalism’ includes Islamic creed and other universals that Islam has approved in the material world to regulate its movement, whether in life generally, in society or within the human world in its individual dimension. Since Islam has defined its detailed positions on the foundations of the major questions of life, society and humanity, we must add those details to the other foundations of creed, so that ‘Islamic doctrinalism’ becomes established among us in its comprehensiveness and can confront other doctrines in all the foundations of their ideas that they address.”[2]
[1] On the term “Ideology”, see Lalande’s Philosophical Encyclopaedia, 2/611-612. The Dictionary of Contemporary Arabic, 1/143, states: Ideology: a political or social doctrine. In philosophy: the science of ideas, whose subject is the study of ideas and meanings, their characteristics, laws and origins, their relationships with the signs expressing them, and investigation of their origins in particular. Ideological: the set of opinions, ideas, beliefs and philosophies held by a people, nation, party or group.
[2] Islamic Doctrinalism and Civilisational Change, published in Qatar in the Book of the Ummah series, no. 6, Rajab 1405 AH/April 1985, pp. 17-21.
Dr Muhsin Abd al-Hamid was born in Kirkuk, Iraq, in 1357 AH/1937 CE. He graduated from the College of Education at the University of Baghdad in 1380 AH, obtained a doctorate in Qur’anic exegesis from Cairo University in 1392 AH, and taught Qur’anic exegesis, creed and modern Islamic thought at the University of Baghdad and Arab universities. He is among the intellectual and organisational leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq and represented the Iraqi Islamic Party on the transitional Governing Council after the occupation of Iraq in 2003 CE.