Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

5 Objectives of Real Islamic Logic

From its introduction Islam has conceived of itself as modern.Judgements produced by Islamic courts are modern in the sense that these are recent decisions taking all jurisprudence into account as well as all classical Islamic sources. Real Islamic Logic can be imagined as supportive of preservation of this form of modernity.

The need for and role of real Islamic Logic will now be analyzed in more detail. First of all it is claimed that Islamic Finance by itself produces a significant incentive to define and investigate systems for Real Islamic Logic.

5.1 Islamic Finance requires Real Islamic Logic

Islamic Finance involves a very frequent use of Islamic courts for decision making about individual cases of economic behavior. But economic decision are made so frequently that the vast majority of such decisions must be taken without making use of the informed advice of an Islamic Court. Real Islamic Logic must support the reasoning taking place outside Islamic Courts. For a system of Islamic Finance it seems very useful if that form of reasoning can be understood in a scholarly fashion just like the logic of other forms of reasoning not primarily depending on human deliberation.

It is not easy to grasp why a strict adherence to the well-advertised tenets of Islamic Finance will lead to a better society. In fact all of these tenets, which can be formulated in terms of restrictions, are hard to understand in three different ways:

• what the restriction means in technical terms,32 and, • how the restriction has come about by means of a chain of reasoning starting from original sources, and, • is there an expectation or intention that and observing the restriction will have positive moral or social consequences and if so, finally, • why compliance with the restriction might lead to a better world in moral terms.

The combined complexity and interaction of Islamic Finance renders it extremely complex with the effect that recourse to groups of Islamic scholars is regularly needed. Theirjudgement may be asked not only for the evaluation of generic schemes and financial products but also for the assessment of individual plans for economic transactions. This may be exactly what is good about Islamic Finance on the long run.

If one believes that preservation of the impact of Islamic courts is an important objective, then the development of a systematic approach to Real Islamic Logic is justified because it adds to the feasibility (improved partitioning of tasks between individual agents and courts) and to the cost reduction (reduction of court workload) of a well-organized system of Islamic Finance. That in turn may motivate research activities about Real Islamic Logic from the long term perspective of Islamic Finance.

5.2 The role of Real Islamic Logic in more detail

The role of Real Islamic Logic is to support methods for avoiding recourse to an Islamic court for each and every issue. Non court mediated andReal islamic Logic based decision making from distributed court output is needed to make the system sufficiently productive when scaling up. This productivity again is needed to safeguard the pivotal positions of Islamic courts which must not be overloaded with futile requests (that is requests amenable to semi-automatic resolution from the geographically distributed class of current local court outputs.)

Evidently Real Islamic Logic features a high degree of concurrency. Many agents are reasoning at the same time, and in fact different agents will be reasoning aboutoneanother which renders the logic epistemic.

It is an essential part of the system that many Islamic Courts are producing theirjudgements (that is LP’s) in a concurrent fashion. Though not democratic in a sense of elected representations the wide spread distribution of legal decision making and its commitment to reconsidering classicaldilemma’s must be considered a virtue.

Dealing with inconsistencies as well as dealing with novel moraldilemma’s is the core of Islamic Court tasks. The Islamic legal system stands on utterly inconsistent feet and for that reason enforces a systematic dependency on human decision making. This should be considered an advantage over a system which resolves the majority of its moraldilemma’s through applications of artificial intelligence and automated reasoning.

5.3 Islamic Court Legal Proposition Processing

Islamic Court Legal Proposition Processing (ICLPP) will be used as a descriptor of the main activity ofislamic courts. The term reasoning is avoided because that suggests regularities and methods to which ICLPP is not in any way committed. ICLPP and Real Islamic Logic are complementary mechanisms where ICLPP is by nature an entirely human group activity. It is not suggested that a formal logic behind ICLPP must be sought. Perhaps ICLPP is best understood as multiple criterion decision making, a process which is amenable to empirical analysis but not amenable to theory based prediction by means of formalized logic.33

Each court maintains a collection of previously issued (or imported) and not yet withdrawn LP’s ready for application in new circumstances. A court maintains a history of new LP’s as well as of withdrawals together with written accounts of the motivation for such steps. The current LP set is likely to beparaconsistent but not consistent (that is properlyparaconsistent ). When formulatingjudgements concerning new cases a court may put forward new LP’s that may or may not contradict its current set of publicly announced LP’s. As a consequence older LP’s may be withdrawn from the court’s current LP set. An LP in the current LP set of court C may be considered a court C belief.

A court performs belief revision in a context ofparaconsistent logic. Reasons for LP withdrawal or for the introduction of LP’s that render the LP base (more) inconsistent so include:

• Changing viewpoints regarding the same topic (for instance because of novel insights in the effects of certain regulations, or due to the emergence of new scientific findings, or due to the, very rare, discovery of new source texts), • Entirely new dilemma’s emerging from (changing) daily practice which require new LP’s as well as revision (withdrawal) of old LP’s, • Efforts to improve the consistence of the current LP base (with the intent to enhance non-court decision making on the its basis).

•Paraconsistency appears because the full collection of valid (that is not yet withdrawn)

LP’s is likely not to be consistent at any time. Belief revision forparaconsistent theories cannot be based on the known framework tailored to classical logic, and this limitation implies (or at least suggests) that human decision making (by an IC) is essential. As it stands no rules for the production of LP’s by courts are given. Each IC therefore provides what we will callparaconsistent belief generation and revision, with these characteristics:

– This particular form of belief revision attempts to attach higher value to older LP’s.

– It makes use of an axiomatic basis emerging from old sources. These old sources produce closed as well as universally quantified LP’s.

– Courts may produce new universally quantified LP’s. The collection of axioms thus formed is highly inconsistent. This inherited inconsistency, which is not amenable to a full resolution of conflicts, implies that very often a court will be needed to resolve a moral dilemma by means of human cognitive and emotional activity. All assertions held in Islam are essentially recent in the sense that only if an Islamic court explicitly confirms ajudgement it must be held true.

– Belief revision (which involves LP withdrawal) is needed to allow unambiguous inference in relevant cases.

– Inference in part consists ofparaconsistent belief generation and revision, with deductive inference playing a minor role. More prominent inference methods are induction and reasoning by way of finding analogues and drawing corresponding conclusions.

Courts can be called into action by individuals who conclude that Real Islamic Logic is inconclusive in a particular case, and courts may be called into action by local authorities who question the validity of Real Islamic Logic based reasoning as applied by individualmuslims or by groups ofmuslims .

5.4 Technical objectives and methods of Real Islamic Logic (RIL)

RIL must provide methods of reasoning that support the rule-based and semi-automatic part of the non-court based Islamic legal process.

1. RIL supports reasoning based multiple criterion decision making.

2. RIL is based on a pragmatic view of “informal logic”. Informal logic stands between philosophical logic and formal logic. It deals with the strength of arguments used in a non-formalized but yet rigorous practice. For instance in [20] the use of emotional aspects in rigorous argument is analyzed. Emotional aspects probably cannot be avoided in the intended practice of RIL. A survey of informal logic is given in [25], see also [22]. A convincing specimen of informal logic is found in [37] where a classification of analogies is provided from adeductivist standpoint.

There is no such thing as informallogic, instead there are different approaches to it.

In spite of that lack of clarity it seems unavoidable to place some form of informal logic in between practice and any application of formal logic. Opinions differ on the question to what extent an approach to informal logic by itself must be based on a particular selection of philosophies of science, language, and law. It is likely that different brands of RIL may be based on different approaches to informal logic each serving as an embedding mechanism for more formalized approaches to logic.

3. RIL supports autonomous decision making on the basis of concurrent streams of current LP information from customizable collections of different courts.34

A plurality of operating Islamic courts each produces in parallel an ever growing stream of LP’s (legal propositions or). At each instant of time the overall legal position is determined by the family of theories reached that moment by each court.35 One may think of the order of 5.000 to 10.000 courts each serving up to 150.000 persons, with new courts being installed on a regular basiswold wide.

The concurrent processing aspect of this distributed decision making process is vital. Its modeling requires formalization just as the modeling of its reasoning mechanisms requires the use of formalized logic. As an example of a concurrency model that may work in this case I mention thread algebra [7] and the distributed and hierarchical versions of thread algebra which have been developed on the basis of the concurrency model in [7].

4. RIL supports separation of concerns:

• Well-developed and widely understood methods are needed to allow individual persons to infer LP’s regarding moraldilemma’s without the support of an Islamic court. This is necessary due to the number of persons that may put forward suchdilemma’s and the limited number of courts.

• RIL must support real time decision making in cases where recourse to a court is self-defeating.36

• RIL supports individuals and groups with making ajudgement concerning whether or not a court should not be involved, and if so in which phase of the process.

• RIL allows for methodical reasoning (rule based and almost or entirely automatic).

Real Islamic Logic for that reason primarily provides an inference method forparaconsistent theories.

• RIL must support adequate documentation of all proceedings.

5. RIL allows for application specific or thematic versions. Different chapters of human activity may call for different dedicated instantiations of RIL (application specific RILs or ASRILs), allowing for the use of specialized terminology. One may think of an ASRIL for: finance, sustainability, food industry, policing, military, trade, art, politics and so on.

6. RIL involves:

•deduction inparaconsistent theories,37

• epistemic reasoning capabilities for supporting agents with reasoning about knowledge of themselves and of other agents, • logic of public announcements because all LP’s produced by courts as well as all withdrawals are public, •deontic logic because most LP’s are about obligation of prohibition of various actions or conditions, • priority logics because mutually inconsistent collections of LP’s may be structured by means of priorities.

7. RIL makes use of a heterogeneous system of priorities where:

• LP’s issued by nearby courts count stronger than LP’s issued by distant ones (relative to a person seeking advice), • recent LP’s by the same court have higher priority than older ones, • real time safety critical decisions are most likely to be taken by means of RIL, • RIL must indicate when a court must be called for advice.

8. RIL allows for:

• A flexible language to denote activities, plans, action histories and states of the world. Decision support concerning the question whether or not a plan is permissible (and whether or not that can be asserted without the help of a court) is the primary task of RIL.

• Integrated planning procedures that support permissible plan generation from stated goals.

• Evaluation methods helpful to determine to what extent a past history of activities performed by one or more agents will be considered morally adequate when handed over forjudgement to a specific court.

• Heuristics for determining in which cases to refer the evaluation of past actions to an Islamic court, and • support for selecting a competent court when needed.

5.5 Feasibility of RIL and RIL oriented research

The list of requirements for RIL is so extensive that designing an adequate and effective RIL from scratch in a single and brief project is inconceivable. Nevertheless, such work need not be considered unrewarding only because of its ambitious appearance.

Empirical work can provide a case base that allows for case studies with different reasoning methods. Theoretical work needs to show how the mentioned logical techniques can be brought together in a unified framework. Practical work in AI style may lead to prototypes of reasoning based decision support systems that make an RIL based reasoning engine available to a pioneering community.

As long as theoretical work aims at grouping together different techniques which supposedly must be brought together in a mature system of RIL, that work may be counted as work on Crescent-star Logic if one intends to avoid the complexities of the adjective Islamic and if one simultaneously wants to attribute the particular grouping of techniques to an intended application in RIL.38

An empirical criterion of the success of a design of RIL and supporting software is that Islamic courts promote its distribution and usage because they feel their own activities being strengthened by usage made of RIL by their client base.39

6 Business ethics risk analysis for RIL development

Who works towards RIL with the application perspective of a RIL enhanced ICLPP in mind faces a number of questions about morality or rather business ethics pertaining to that particular line of work. I intend to shed light on these matters in this section of the paper. First I will restate the orientation of the work on RIL for which its business ethics is to be scrutinized.

6.1 Restating the orientation towards a RIL supported ICLPP

A picture has been drawn of the mechanics of a scaled up Islamic Legal Process that makes use of Islamic Legal Reasoning performed within Islamic courts and of Real Islamic Logic applied outside courts with the main purpose to ease the burden of decision making for the courts.

In the absence of a well-understood Real Islamic Logic one may postulate the existence of a Natural Islamic Logic, which represents the ethical decision making practiced bymuslims in circumstances they consider sufficiently simple or sufficiently conclusive for them not to seek for advice of a court. The project to develop a Real Islamic Logic looks for more than the mere psychology of Natural Islamic Logic. The project requires a systematic approach to disentangle the reasoning process currently performed by way of Natural Islamic Logic as to improve the entire system at least from the point of view of acknowledged Islamic objectives.

The essential quality of the entire Islamic Legal Process is the permanent involvement of Islamic courts in many aspects of decision making, in a way that seems to resist automation. This quality has become more important with the progress of computing technology.

I have not made an attempt to put forward arguments that a well-designed system of Real Islamic Logic, when put in place at a grand scale, will indeed bring some particular family of relevant objectives closer to their realization. But is seems clear that a more systematic approach to that part of the legal process may foster the role of Islamic courts and for that reason it may be considered plausible that this will promote goals that motivate these courts.

The assumption that fostering the role of Islamic courts will bring about progress towards intrinsic Islamic objectives underlies the motivation given for RIL and its application perspective. As an assumption, its validity cannot be confirmed by mere theoretical work and this assumption for that reason takes the form of an unproven axiom. Developing RIL by means of the design of a systematic approach to Natural Islamic Logic has been outlined and a survey of the techniques from formal logic that might come into play has been given. Of course the real work for developing a comprehensible and effective Real Islamic Logic has yet to begin anda even proof of concept is missing at this stage of development. A sharp condemnation of the plan to develop RIL cannot be based on known adverse consequences of its application.

6.2 Working on the basis of randomized source documents

At this point of our development of RIL and its rationale a remarkable and speculative hypothesis can be formulated. The hypothesis being that:

the entire Islamic Legal Process inherits its powerful functionality first and for all from the fact that the heritage of the original sources, after years of evolution and codification of the outcomes of that evolution, still defeats an automated logical analysis to such an extent that:

i ) the legal process is best put in the hands of a large number of concurrently operating autonomous groups of informed persons (the courts), cooperating with a number of highly skilled and informed individuals (excellent Islamic scholars), and, ii) the members of these courts as well as the informed individuals who play a role constitute a meritocracy, rather than that they have been selected by means of majority voting, iii) propertiesi ) and ii) are the distinctive characteristics of the Islamic Legal Process in comparison with competing mechanisms.

If this hypothesis is actually valid it may also be maintained as a plausible assumption concerning an alternative world in which the original sources have been laid down in an almost random way. A weaker and for that reason more plausible assessment is that after many years of autonomous evolution the Islamic Legal Process has become quite stable against (hypothetical) small modifications of the original sources. This stability against hypothetical perturbations of the source documents mainly derives from the distributed and autonomous nature of the Islamic legal process. If that process were firmly centralized each single line in the original source texts would have more impact on current decision making.

When the decision was made to found Islam around the year 720 on the basis of the collected original sources then available, the deciding actors rightly foresaw (perhaps unconsciously) that the combined complexity of these sources would defeat any attempted simplification and would keep readers and scholars busy for centuries to come, even in times of legal process automation.

6.2.1 Centralization: a risk provoked by Islamic Finance?

If one accepts that the distributed nature, with many autonomous courts working concurrently throughout the world, is a major strength of the Islamic legal process then the widespread call for unity in the world of Islamic Finance is seriously misguided. This may indicate a systemic risk for Islamic Finance as well as for Real Islamic Logic. Competition on the financial market may force Islamic Finance into structures of centralized control that are incompatible with the distributed and autonomous nature of the Islamic legal process. Losing that competition, however, is problematic too because it limits the influence for which Islamic Finance has been originally set up. If one takes this risk of derailment into centralized structures seriously that gives way to another chapter ofTarek ElDiwani’s criticism that Islamic Finance imports western financial habits far too quickly and without due consideration of the risks thereof and of the longer term objectives of Islam (see the survey ofTarek ElDiwany’s positions of [15] in [6]).

6.2.2 Genetic programming needed?

The rather mechanical picture of a thread vector of threads, each representing the behavior of a single court,40 operating together as a multithreaded system (in the terminology of [7]) scheduled by way of strategic interleaving, fails to explain why the points of view of different courts do not diverge in time to an extent that similarities become rare. A remedy that may promote some convergence is as follows: at regular intervals a court imports randomly chosen LP’s held by other courts. The probability of doing so is higher if the other court is moremainstream . To allow for this mechanism rather than merely having level 6 containing the mainstream communities of level 5 of the stratification, a degree of centrality must be imposed on level 5 communities (with the level 6 and mainstream communities being the ones for which the degree of centrality exceeds some threshold) and the more central a community is considered the more likely is an export of LP’s maintained by one of its courts toan other court. This randomized export of LP’s introduces a mechanism that may be compared to the working of genetic programming.

6.3Strengths,Weaknesses , Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)

Working towards RIL with its intended application in mind poses a researcher in a position where a wide range of moral issues needs to be dealt with. Even to develop a survey of these issues is so complicated that it cannot be satisfactorily done in this paper. But an attempt must be made. I will focus on the development of an RIL supported ICLPP as a process about which the moral consequences of significant participation are to be assessed. For this process a SWOT analysis will be made from three viewpoints, the results are rendered in a SWOT diagram which highlights key elements for each of the four categories of SWOT.

A SWOT analysis for a subject S will provide insight in the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats relevant to S More precisely a SWOT analysis is carried out with respect to three ingredients:

subject : some entity, concept, or mechanism of which the SWOT is made, context: the context of a particular environment perspective: a viewpoint, or perspective from which the SWOT is formulated.

For instance a SWOT can be made with subject: Financial Industry in London, context:

European competition in the financial industry, perspective: economic development of the London area. An alternative perspective may be: the UK tax payer. An alternative context may be: protection of office buildings against various risks in the UK.

Two different context/perspective pairs for the same subject (development of a RIL based ICLPP) will be considered, and then a third SWOT analysis is made with the legal process of a constitution based liberal democracy as a subject in the context of its competition with an RIL based ICLPP and from the perspective of a supporter of the liberal democratic political structures. Together this leads to three SWOT diagrams.

1. RIL based ICLPP (entity) in the competition with the current ICLPP which it eventually seeks to replace context), seen from inside Islam in its current form (perspective).

2. An RIL based ICLPP (entity) in the context of Islam (having embraced RIL and its applications perspective) competing with other non-Islamic ideologies (context), seen from inside a hypothetical stage of Islam having adapted to its modified process (perspective).

3. An RIL based ICLPP seen as an outpost of Islam (entity) in the context of a world with a number of constitution based liberal democracies for which RIL based ICLPP may be a competing process (context) seen from a classical democratic perspective outside Islam.

A SWOT can be made from outside Islam and from inside for instance and the results that are obtained may differ vastly. Moral risks can only be formulated from a certain perspective. The three SWOT diagrams are meant to deal with three kinds of objections each rendered as weaknesses or threats within an appropriate SWOT diagram.

1. Objections to development of RIL from a contemporary Islamic perspective, not particularly keen on legal process innovation.

2. Objections to the application perspective of RIL in terms of legal process innovation, given the need to compete with other systems outside Islam.

3. Objections to RIL development raised by those who consider ICLPP to constitute a risk for the maintenance of other (non-Islamic) legal processes for which the legal or ethical basis is considered superior, or at least of an independent value in need of preservation (seen from some perspective outside Islam).

6.3.1 A SWOT from a simulated internal perspective

This SWOT analysis highlights the ways in which a participant to the development of RIL may be criticized by participants of the current ICLPP. Options for such criticism are listed as treats in this SWOT analysis. The perspective is in fact a (hypothetical) inside conventional ICLPP perspective which is formulated from outside Islam.41

Strengths. (i )potential new development for ICLPP, which may be in need of innovation.

Weaknesses. These take the form the RIL may not be developed (or used after development) to the satisfaction of its users and their local courts. Indeed RIL development is risky: it may be inconclusive, there may be scaling problems,results may be unconvincing or even counterproductive.

Opportunities. (i ) Constituting a new area for applied logic, thus attracting significant external interest, (ii) attracting the attention of a young generation ofmuslims .

Threats. (i ) being considered innovation for its own sake, unable to keepfocussed on true and classical legal foundations of Islam, (ii) logic becoming considered too distant from ordinary life42 (iii) scholars constituting courts are unwilling to take notice of logical methods and for that reason unwilling to take new colleagues on board who intend to make use of such methods.43 (iv) opponents of RIL may successfully claim that introduction and usage RIL will lead to uniformity which then leads to centralization, a development that they want to prevent at all costs.

6.3.2 A SWOT diagram froman friendly external perspective

This SWOT analysis concerns the evaluation of RIL supported ICLPP (which serves as the motivation for RIL designs and development), from a (hypothetical) Islamic perspective.

This perspective is formulated under the assumption that RIL supported ICLPP (or at least a development in that direction) has obtained ample support in mainstream Islam.44

Strengths. (i ) autonomy, (ii) real time decision making enabled about all daily matters on moral grounds, (iii) grounded in a long history, (iv) adaptation to local circumstances of a community, (v) law is not seen as an artificial fence which citizens may always try to approach (or even try to cross), rather law permanently guides everyone at in appropriate directions.

Weaknesses. (i )lacking cohesion (correspondence) between different courts, (ii) low authority by defective grounding of court decisions. (ICLPP may be too weak a process to produce grounds for decisions that are widely accepted), (iii) inability to develop adequate customizations (local adaptations) of the ICLPP, again with lacking authority as a consequence. (iii)Unclarity about its own ambitions: should this process be installed everywhere on the long run, or only in some countries with other countries following other governance principles? Should the process be made subordinate to other legal systems if those are (locally) dominant because a majority of a population has voted that way? If that is done, can it still retain its strength?

Opportunities. (i ) Real Islamic Finance may be developed on the basis of Islamic Finance and Real Islamic logic: less important restrictions may subsequently be abandoned and the courts may be much more involved in ethical decision making about particular financial strategies and activities, (ii) customization of ICLPP to various local circumstances may be improved, (iii) RIL may be developed and used to facilitate a more efficient and for that reason also more frequent use of courts.

Threats. (i )centralization may become dominant with all advantages gone, (ii) centralization may creep into the system because of the modern ICT technologies, (iii) the system is outperformed by a competing system, in particular constitution based liberal democracies which do not tolerate significant local variations in legal decision making.

6.3.3 A SWOT diagram from a cautious external perspective

The third SWOT analysis works from an external position, in particular from the position of the legal process of a constitution based liberal democracy, and it grasps the reflection on its own position assuming the emergence of an RIL supported ICLPP as depicted above, which is considered an emerging competitor.

Strengths. (i ) Centralized law making produces better rules with wider acceptance, easily defended against the outcome of local autonomous ICLPP’s. (ii) Consistency of law throughout a wide area allows persons to be very mobile.

Weaknesses. (i ) Citizens take a defensive attitude against the law (even if it has been constructed in part in their own name) more often than not viewing it as an unwanted limitation of their possible behavior and endlessly trying to stretch its boundaries.

(ii) Moral arguments have lost prominent status, though some issues can only be solved by means of such arguments. (iii) Minorities may feel poorly represented by the dominant legal system.

Opportunities. (i ) Inside area A, the legal platform may allow for a reduced ICLPP (reduced because not permitted to overrule some constitutional principles), thus making area A more attractive to Islamic citizens and allowing A to make optimal use of their talents and skills. (iii)if ICLPP structures are more effective in fighting crime and other results of lacking social cohesion, such advantages can be made use of, (iv) the same holds for other pressing social problems such as taking care of the elderly.

Threats. (i ) If clear rules are lacking the emergence of an ICLPP infrastructure in area A may endanger the authority (and effectiveness) of the existing legal structure, without replacing it to the satisfaction of a voting majority, (ii) if the right to set up an ICLPP infrastructure, (on top of A’s existing legal system), may conflicts between both legal processes may arise and the power structures of A may come under pressure from allies of ICLPP outside A. Such pressures may be conventional political once, but also involve wars and acts of terrorism. (iii) When ICLPP comes into prominence, court autonomy may imply severe restrictions on individual mobility to areas supervised by other courts.

6.4 Integrating the SWOT diagrams

These SWOT’s are hardly consistent. From anan external position (the current author’s position) the external SWOT takes priority over both internal ones. A worker on RIL assumes that for risk analysis and for selection of strategy and tactics taking the second SWOT into account may take priority over taking the first o into account.

That imposition of priorities does not imply a substantial weakening of the arguments which have been put forward in favor of RIL and its potential use. It only indicates operational boundary conditions. Together these SWOT analysis results provide some insight the pro’s and con’s of participating in RIL development for a non-muslim . I conclude that participation in RIL development is defensible for an outsider to Islam who is strongly supportive of a constitution based liberal democracy.

The outsider’s position brings with it some moraldilemma’s which have not been uncovered by means of the above SWOT analysis exercises. This requires some further comments.

6.4.1 Moral issues concerning the outsider’s position

Given the non-Islamic, that is outsider, position to which I committed myself, claiming a preference for the outcomes of the third SWOT analysis over the second and of the second one over the first will not resolve all possible ethical questions concerning the work on this paper. I would hope to be able to write in such a way that the work becomes acceptable for readers from a very wide ideological and religious spectrum. Aiming at that, however, implies that potential worries of some potential readers must be dealt with which are absent if not foreign to other potential readers. Taking the worries of some seriously can alienate others.

The outsider’s position is complicated by worries coming from two sides so to speak.

Those who consider Islam a dangerous enemy of democracy, liberalism, and, of free expression of opinion, may regard the plan to develop logic in order to become more functional for Islam a dangerous activity (and its agent may be considered naive at best). For people from Islam this perspective is so unattractive that they may not be willing to read a paper which pays any attention to it. Still I have to ask for some attention because my outsider’s position implies that such voices, often coming from so-called conservative politicians, cannot be overheard. Now what can I say? The moral issues cannot be definitively dealt with in isolation. Ethical questions about research and development must be considered in a larger context, taking corresponding problems in other fields into account.

I will make use of two fields of research and development as a tool for comparison: (i ) applied logic in general and (ii) the development that has led to the implementations if Islamic Finance.

I notice that many applications of logic in computing have been ready made for application in the military sector. Such applications can be developed by one’s enemy too, because publication is open to anyone who pays the relatively low cost of disclosure including an enemy. Thus even if one agrees that Islam is an “enemy” and that RIL can be applied in Islam, that state of affairs does not imply any moral problem for an RIL worker, the potential support for an enemy holds in both cases, and we know that right wing ideologists hardly ever suggest not to perform applied science and technology because that may empower the military and industrial capabilities of their enemies more than those of their allies.

6.4.2 Comparison with defense system oriented research considered flawed

In spite of this comparison with applied logic, an ethical problem certainly emerges because RIL might be considered to be so specific for its Islamic background that working on RIL can only be useful for applications aiming towards a particular form of Jihad.

Thus application asymmetry can lead to a moral problem. Against this objection, which portrays supporting work on RIL as less defensible than “ordinary applied logic focusing on military applications” the following can be said.

• In the initial stages RIL’s development is not conclusive from an application point of view. Until that is the case there is no true specificity of RIL oriented work for applications in the context of ICLPP (an intended specificity alone implies no moral problem with regard to asymmetric applicability).

• If RIL is successfully developed its methods and techniques may have other applications besides the intended one (thus widely accessible publication is mandatory if an asymmetry based critique is to be avoided).

• If RIL matures and is applied in the Islamic Legal process in the intended way that state of affairs may lead by way of computational evolution to centralized, or ratheruniformized , control of the legal reasoning used outside courts, because monitoring information is likely to end up in public data bases, thus allowing legal meta-studies to be made.45

• The situation may be compared with the development of Islamic Finance. Islamic windows46 of banks managed from UK and USA have played an important role in getting the set of Islamic products defined and in their subsequent commercialization.

This matter seems not to have drawn much critical attention from fierce opponents of Islam. That lack of criticism is quite understandable: a few highly internationally operating western banks recognized a market opportunity and they took advantage of it successfully. These western banks have been so successful in that activity that it may be valued as a significant achievement that native banks from Islamic countries (that is, countries where a large part of the population ismuslim ) finally have been able to acquire a leading role in matters of Islamic Finance.

Sustainability of these leading roles has yet to be shown.

• As an economic phenomenon the evolution towards prominence of native banks in providing the products of Islamic Finance (in Islamic countries) may be compared to the prominence which Japan has acquired in the car industry between, say, 1970 and 2010. There is no need to view the acquisition of the prominent role of native banks as a manifestation of Jihad because ordinary market competition can be used as an alternative and more attractive explanation of that development. Jihad was involved earlier when the preconditions of these developments were set.

These arguments together make me believe that an outsider should not (or rather may ask not to) be sharply criticized (by other outsiders, perhaps including anti-Islam theorists) for doing work in such a way that he or she directly contributes to a development of RIL, including its intended application.

3 A community oriented description of Islam

Who belongs to Islam, and what themes and activities can be called Islamic? These questions are supposed to have some kind of an answer as soon as one starts writing about Islamic Finance or about Islamic Logic. The simplest option is to assume that Islam is a well-known notion provided with useful definitions elsewhere so that the matter need not be discussed in further detail. That assumption seems tounderly much writing in these areas but I doubt its validity. Below I will provide a description of the extension of Islam which yields a reasonably explicit criterion allowing to assess to what extent an approach to finance may be called Islamic and to what extent a contemporary approach to logic deserves being labeled (Real) Islamic.15

It is assumed that at any moment of time Islam consists of a collectionIt of persons with 720 t. This setIt needs to be identified for various t. A sequence of 8 sets of persons It 0, It 1, It 2, It 3, It 4, It 5, It 6 and It 7 will be defined, each less inclusive. These sets change in time, for instance because the deceased must be deleted from each set in which they have been included at the time of their death. New persons can enter for the first time at all stages except stage 6 and 7. Only death removes persons from the set I0. Members can move up and down through the various levels this hierarchy so to speak.

By means of this sequence a reasonably precise definition of who belongs to Islam at time t can be provided. This nested series of sets can also be used to determine when an activity can be called Islamic. Thus at any instant of time t the sets have a specific extension It n with0 n 7 each consisting of persons living at time t, with It n It n+1

for 0 n < 7.

At any time Islam will mean one of the setsIt n, however with It 5 constituting the default extension of Islam. If another extension is meant that must be mentioned explicitly.

Why is this relevant? For instance, even after having read extensively about Islamic Finance one may still wonder: what justifies the label Islamic for these financial activities?16 Can someone, at least in principle, define his or her own system of Islamic Finance (or of Islamic Logic) as a theoretical project in a Northern European University carried out by non-muslims , or is such a state of affairs impossible by definition?

None of these questions can be given a reliable answer if no extension of Islam and of points of view “held by Islam” is known, and the objective of this section is to make some progress on that matter. Unfortunately but not uncharacteristically we will make use of sources that are not full in agreement with one-another. Except for the design of the sets It 0−7, and except for issues concerning Islamic Finance, the knowledge of Islam used in this section has been taken mainly from the following sources Armstrong [3], Donner [14], and Esposito [18].

Donner’s book, proposes an intriguing and attractive picture of the prophet Muhammad and his contemporaries, organized as a community of believers, until the creation of Islam some 80 years after the death of the prophet. He departs from the conventional picture as sketched by Armstrong. Esposito forcefully argues against North American prejudice. He bases his arguments on several international survey studies, conducted by Gallup, about the opinions held by members of Islam regarding a range of issues. In terms of the sequence It 0−7 that will be defined in more detail below, I guess that Esposito describes the result of interviews of members of the stage I5 in that listing. Supporters of the 9-11 attacks have been included in the reported polls, but there is no quantitative information provided in [18] about the coverage of the distribution of questionnaires over the different streams within Islam that Esposito intends to distinguish.

3.1 Extension independent aspects of Islam

As stated above our objective is to shed light on the following: who belongs to Islam (the extension of Islam), what are Islamic points of view, what qualifies an approach or method as Islamic. We begin with an “axiom”.

AXIOM 1: What Islam has to say about a topic T is entirely and exclusively determined by the points of view of those persons who currently are to be considered as belonging to Islam.

This axiom has several implications which are rather independent of time and for that reason from the actual extension of the membership of Islam:

• Islam’s view concerning T, if it exists at all, can change over time.

• Islam’s view on T cannot be discovered exclusively by reading old sources.

• During the life of the prophet Muhammad Islam did not yet exist, the Qur’an for that reason, assuming that it coincides with Muhammad’s spoken words, is not an immediate source for “Islamic viewpoints”.

• In most cases (that is for most T) some kind of “voting”, either explicit or implicit will be required to arrive at an Islamic viewpoint about topic T.

• Islam is entirely man made, even if its sources may have been be revealed.

• Confirmation of the revealed status at time t of the original sources is part of becoming a member of the set It 0

• The construction of Islam is an ongoing process with revealed sources and their continuous interpretation playing a very important role.

• The elevation around the year 720 of Muhammad’s oral tradition, after its written compilation (perhaps around the year 650), to the status of the primary revealed source of Islam has been an extremely successful conscious design decision that went into the construction of Islam. Further successful design decisions were to come.

• Design decisions about Islam are exclusively taken by members of Islam. Such design decisions are just points of view about certain topics turned into assertions that must be confirmed by new members of stages 5 and 6. In terms of the hierarchy of sets such a decision can adapt the bundle of points of view adhered to by mainstream communities and for that reason incorporation of a decision may reduce the number of mainstream communities (thus moving their members back from level 6 to level 5.)

• Who belongs to Islam, is exclusively decided by members of Islam, and this cannot be undone retrospectively, that is who belongs to Islam at time t will always belong to Islam at time t′ > t though perhaps at a different level of the stratification.

3.2 A stratified membership description

In order to gain insight in the extension of Islam at an arbitrary moment in time an axiom is used that allows for a layered decomposition of its membership.

AXIOM 2. Islam provides unity in diversity. For membership of Islam distinguish 7

levels can be distinguished, which are incrementally more demanding.

ABBREVIATION: V is used as an abbreviation of the following vow: “God is the only god and Muhammad is his most prominent and most recent prophet”.

Retrospective subjective members. It 0 consists of those (living) people who have at some time r t expressed V (with or without the presence of witnesses).

According to some It 0 coincides exactly with members of Islam at time t. What can be held against this viewpoint is that persons may be insufficiently aware of the consequences when making the vow V.

Members of It 0 may be members of other religions as well (usually only after revoking vowV ) .17

Subjective members. It 1 consists of the members of It 0 who have not revoked their vow V since asserting it.

It 1 is disjoint with Judaism, all Christian religions, and with most religions from India, Japan, China. It 1 is a well-known separator in topological terms and it can be used as a definition of Islam if atheistic (who do not accept the concept of god) andzerotheistic (who acknowledge the concept of god but are in addition of the opinion that currently no god exists) persons are not taken into account.

Conscious subjective members. It 2 consists of the members of It 1 who are at time t willing to renew the vow V.

Active members. It 3 consists of the members of It 2 who (at time t) perform conventional religious tasks (regular prayer, regular gifts to the poor, making a journey to Mecca), Community members. It 4 consists of members of It 3 who perform their conventional religious tasks in the context of and in accordance with a community of persons all members of It 3, Thus It 3 is the union of a collection of communities each made up from members of It 3.

No attempt is made to decompose communities intosubcommunities . Doing so may be important for various purposes. It leads to a partially ordered refinement of the proposed stratification.

Traditional community members. It 5consists of the members of those communities that constitute It 4 of which the members are (collectively) aware of:

• a package of viewpoints collectively considered a consequence of Islam (though in fact often only in their specific community), • a line of descent in terms of communities from the initial phase of Islam, • a line of descent in terms of packages of viewpoints (the community lineage consists of a sequence of communities and intervals of their existence; it must be equipped with a package of viewpoints held during each of these phases). This theological lineage must have significant explanatory value for the community’s current positions.

Mainstream traditional community members. It 6 comprises (the union of) a collection of communities who have decided that they are among the mainstream communities accounted for in stage 5, while other communities have been left out. The different communities at this level may share:

•some beliefs (neutral assertions), • some elements of orthopraxy, • some objectives concerning thepreferrered development towards a next stage of the community’s existence.

For a reliable demarcation of It 6 as a subset of It 5 it is necessary that the entire genealogy of branching communities composing It 5 is assessed with a degree of centrality within Islam. This is a matter of sociology and group structure and group interconnection analysis rather than a matter of deciding about the centrality of viewpoints.

Anyhow, It 6 singles out the mainstream communities from the marginal,excentric and extremist communities.18

Mainstream based forward movers. It 7 consists of selected members of various communities existing at level It 6, who actively perform Jihad and in various ways are quite visible at least within the membership of It 5 and perhaps also outside It 5 and even outside It 0. Here Jihad may take various forms, for instance:

• spreading the word, • living a life with visible piety, which may be convincing for others.

• developing innovative activities that allow groups of persons to perform their life compatible with a package of viewpoints held by their community as mentioned in the specification of It 5.

3.3 Qualification of views and activities

Having dealt with the classification of individuals and groups the classification of activities and viewpoints can be put on a reasonably firm footing.19

DEFINITION 1. An assertion belongs to the points of view of Islam if some community as mentioned in the definition of It 5 adheres to the assertion.20

DEFINITION 2. An assertion belongs to the points of view of mainstream Islam if some community as mentioned in the definition of It 6 adheres to the assertion.

DEFINITION 3. An assertion belongs to the shared points of view of Islam if a large majority (over 75%) of communities as mentioned in the definition of It 5 adheres to the assertion.

DEFINITION 4. An assertion belongs to the shared points of view of mainstream Islam if a large majority (over 75%) of communities as mentioned in the definition of It 6 adheres to the assertion.

DEFINITION 5. A theory, methodology or system can be called Islamic if it is endorsed by at least one community included in It 5. It is a mainstream Islamic theory, method or system, if it is endorsed by one of the communities constituting It 6. It is shared (or shared mainstream) if it is endorsed by a significant (over 75%) of communities of It 5, respectively of It 6.

Here are some examples of the use of these definitions.

• That a woman should not be driving a car is a point of view of mainstream Islam.

• That a woman is allowed to drive a car is a point of view of mainstream Islam.

• That drinking alcohol must be avoided is a shared point of view of Islam.

• That non-Islamic (or rather outside I2) western civilians can be aggressively attacked is a non-shared, non-mainstream point of view of Islam.

• That the poor should be supported is a shared point of view of Islam.

• That interests on loans should neither be paid nor collected is a non-shared point of view of mainstream Islam. The support for this point of view is growing, however, and it may well become a shared point of view of mainstream Islam in the next 100 years.

Some further consequences of the stratified definition of Islam can be mentioned:

•from outside It 2, on cannot design a system of Islamic finance, by definition, unless appropriateendorsment is obtained. (This is the impact of definition 5.)

• The set of points of view of Islam is inconsistent, mainly because viewpoints that stem from more than one community are taken into account.

• In fact even the family of shared points of view of mainstream Islam is not protected against logical inconsistency. But that is a matter related to the fact that majority voting processes can lead outside logical validity, which is generally a fact of social choice theory unspecific for Islam.

• Given this layered architecture of Islam it is not even difficult to design (by way of a thought experiment) a package of LinkedIn groups which allow to capture all of Islam as well as the dynamics of its constituting communities as dedicated (an perhaps preferably closed) LinkedIn groups. That requires 1.500.000.000 persons to be covered by LinkedIn, which is rapidly becoming technologically feasible. Leaving aside legal and political objections before long large movements like Islam can be entirely covered by social media, at least in principle.

• Islam has held inconsistent views since its earliest days. Both Christianity and Islam may be in part understood in terms of their coming to grips with an event of political assassination of a major figure (Jesus, andUthman respectively). A major distinction between these religions arises, however, from that fact that Islam has kept both sides of this deep moral dilemma21 within its ranks (an even within the mainstream communities composing stage It 6), whereas all of Christianity has taken side for the victim of the assassination so to speak.

• The logic used by Islam, if any, is aparaconsistent propositional logic. Many forms ofparaconsistent logic have been developed since 1900 andill require an extensive study to find out which version fits best.22 The Roman Catholic Church on the other hand has made an attempt to live up to a consistent logic. For the union of Christian churches and their collective points of view findingaparaconsistent logic is also the best one can hope for, while for particular churches the search for full consistency has been important. That has led to fragmentation and diversity in Christianity to which Islam seems to be less prone due to its principled compatibility with localinconsistencies, that is by its ability to settle for mere pragmaticparaconsistency .

Paraconsistent logics are notmainstream in the west. This is remarkable, because removing local inconsistencies is as difficult as anywhere else. I believe that “western” scientific paradigms tend to develop into completions of consistent subsets of originallyparaconsistent theories, this process leading to a fragmentation not unlike the religious fragmentation just mentioned.

Now we all know that if a mother asserts that her child C needs to sleep at 8 PM while its father insists that it may stay awake until 9 PM both may successfully and consistently agree that it must wake up next morning at 7.30 AM, expecting that the latter goal will be aimed at unconfused by the parental disagreement about the preferred timing of C’s going to bed. Making sense of this situation requiresaparaconsistent logic of parental behavior, however.

• Finally the classification mechanism can be applied to the main theme of this paper.

– Doing applied research on a particular system of Islamic Finance constitutes an Islamic activity and it requires being a member of stage 5 or beyond at least.

– Making proposals for systems of Islamic Finance is not necessarily an Islamic task (that is it can be done by individuals who are not stage-0 members.)

– Labeling a proposed financial system as a system of Islamic Finance can only be done by a group of members of stage 5 together representing at least one of its communities.

– Doing applied work within Real Islamic Logic is a task only accessible for members of stage 5 or beyond.

– Drafting proposals for real Islamic Logic is accessible to non-members of stage 0. (It is not always an Islamic activity.)

Besides questioning to what extent it is reasonable to label activities in finance and logic as Islamic, one may consider this matter from the other extreme position: which processes, tasks and entities can be called Islamic, and more generally can be labeled with a religious identity. I will dwell on that matter briefly below merely coming to the conclusion that matters are far from clear.

3.4 Some reflection on the use of a religious adjective

I will now confront the question whether or not a seemingly neutral theme like finance or logic might be provided with the adjective “Islamic” or with any other religious adjective.

By way of example I will consider the adjective “Roman catholic” (in the remainder of this section abbreviated to catholic) instead of the adjective Islamic. Consider the catholic priest John active in a rural area, who administers a parish P, who owns a horse H and who regularly serves the mass in ”his” church C. In addition he is in charge of school S.

It seems rather absurd to label horse H Roman catholic merely because it is owned by a catholic priest. An object or structure X being catholic must say something significant about X itself, merely a reference to an owner is definitely not sufficient.

3.4.1 Religious labeling of material objects, books, theories and thoughts

So what about the school. If the horse cannot be catholic can the bricks and glass constituting the school be catholic? It seems more plausible to assume that the term “school” must be disambiguated, because it refers both to an organization, which might be labeled catholic, and to a physical building which is used by this organization, the building being less amenable to a religious adjective. For the church building the same remark may apply: as a building it is hardly amenable to an application of the adjective catholic, whereas the community making use of the church is plausibly labeled catholic.

But where is this reductionist strategy leading to. The organization running the school and the community constituting the parish (and making use of the church) can be labeled catholic merely because the members of these groups are considered catholic. But that is obviously insufficient, because if these organizations/communities are to be perceived as catholic, besides a constraint on their membership this also imposes the requirement of having acquired an adequate accreditation by the local catholic bishop, acting on behalf of the catholic pope. This brings us reasonably close to the definition of a catholic school (or parish).

One may then consider a book with catholic religious hymns used in church C. Is this book with hymns catholic, and if not is the collection of hymns itself catholic, or is it merely a neutral tool for an activity performed by a catholic community. Similarly a book may contain the catechism of thecatholic church , which is not to say that the book itself is catholic.

Finally one may face the question to what extent a body of ideas can be considered catholic. This leads to the specific question whether or not the catholic faith (as a collection of ideas) is itself catholic. If not then X being catholic is not even a precondition for “catholic X” to make sense. If so, then that faith constitutes a body of ideas which is rightfully labeled catholic. Alternatively one might also hold that “catholic faith” rather than referring to something catholic specifies someone’s state of mind which then might be considered catholic. That state of mind is not amenable toepiscopal accreditation, however, neither is any other property a person inherits from his or her state of mind.

Summarizing these considerations I conclude that the question “when can an X be called Islamic” is quite difficult to answer but this difficulty is not specific for Islam, but rather independent from Islam. Further for a specific theme or these T the question “can T be called Islamic” can be analyzed in sociological terms by making use of the layered stratification of its extension. Application of these matters is not at all obvious, however. The question “is the Qur’an an Islamic text” indicates some of the complications involved. The answer to this question may be negative if one thinks of Qur’an primarily in the time of its writing but it may be positive when it is analyzed in terms of its much later reception. So it appears that the latter question is insufficiently specific to allow for a definite answer.

3.4.2 An instrumental view on the label Islamic

The simplest way to appreciate Real Islamic Logic and Islamic Finance is to assume that logic and finance get colored in religious terms because of the intended application. An instrument used for Jihad may be labeled an Islamic instrument, even if it might be used alternatively for the opposite purpose just as well.

This convention being somewhat unsatisfactory I suggest that an instrument might be labeled Islamic (mainstream Islamic) if the following three (four) criteria are met:

•it is used for Jihad, using a very liberal and preferably non-violent interpretation of that term, and, • it is specific (or has been designed specifically) for that particular use, and, • if the previous observations are confirmed by an uncontested group of leading figures in a stage 5 (or higher) community.

• (If the confirmation is provided by a stage 6 (or 7) community it is a mainstream Islamic instrument.)

Given this convention about using Islamic as a label, some further remarks can be made considering the plausibility of religious labeling in various circumstances, now rendered specifically for Islam:

• A recent copy of the Qur’an is a (mainstream) Islamic book (instrument for distributing information, whereas its content has been transformed from non-Islamic to Islamic around the year 720.

• At second inspection the decisive argument that horse H above can’t be labeled Roman catholic lies in the fact that H is in no way specific for the catholic faith, although the way he is used may be dedicated towards strengthening that particular religion. This same argument generalizes to all animals.

• A person is Islamic if he or she is a member of Islam. This is a matter of degree in accordance with the stratification.

• No animal and no natural location can be Islamic. Except for persons only artifacts (including their abstract designs) can plausibly be labeled Islamic.

• Islamic Finance is a plausible term because the particular form of finance is supposed to satisfy the four criteria mentioned above. In fact it may be labeled a mainstream Islamic activity.

• If the design of Real Islamic Finance is sufficiently specific and its intended application is sufficiently compatible with some form of Jihad that will validate the use of the phrase given the mentioned criteria.

•the introduction of RIL in this paper does not qualify as an Islamic activity.

4 Comparing Real Islamic Logic and Islamic Finance

Before working out a specific proposal for Real Islamic Logic in some detail, that notion which is transpiring in an abstract or distant formalready, will be compared to Islamic Finance which has been used since around the year 1930 onwards. This comparison is supposed to be helpful for developing an understanding of what RIL can be given a perspective on Islamic Finance.

After that comparison the companion notions Crescent-star Finance and Crescent-star Logic will be briefly compared.

4.1 Comparing IF and RIL in some detail

It has been argued that whether or not the label Roman catholic can be assigned to some concept is a difficult matter and that difficulty is similar for the adjective Islamic.

Nevertheless some convention has been formulated and that convention underlies the understanding of the adjective Islamic in the sequel of this paper. I will now make an attempt to highlight in detail some important merits and demerits of the phrase Islamic Finance while contrasting it with Real Islamic Logic.

1. As I have noticed already above Islamic Finance seems not to be used in existing literature with the historic bias which is dominantly assumed for Islamic Logic.

2. I briefly consider Islamic Astronomy. That has a historic connotation by default.

One might seek for a modern version of it “Modern Islamic Astronomy” or even aJihadic form“ Real Islamic Astronomy” (or a movement with similar objectives).

None of these exist because Modern Islamic Astronomy is simply Astronomy.

3. There is no contemporary Islamic Astronomy for the simple reason that conventional astronomy is entirely acceptable from an Islamic perspective. Real Islamic Logic may be considered meaningless in the same way as contemporary Islamic Astronomy is. Likewise some hold Islamic Finance to be a self-contradictory notion. However, these arguments are flawed because although Islam suggests no alternative ways for pursuing astronomy, Islamic Finance definitely involves a rather specific set of financial conventions and the logic for Islamic Finance may be designed quite specifically as a customized toolbox for applications in an Islamic context. A similar argument can be put forward concerning RIL.

4. The logic involved in Real Islamic Logic can be pursued both in a philosophical style and in a more formalist style. At least for philosophical logic the potential to work in anIslamization oriented mode cannot be ruled out as easily as for instance for physics and mathematics.

5. Islamic Finance is a successful intellectual construction that could have originated outside Islam in theory (not what actually happened, it was a mainstream Islamic development). Pursuing Islamic Finance is by definition a matter formuslims only.

6. A significant result of Islamic Finance is the appearance of Arabic terms and concepts in the financial world. A similar development is not to be expected from the pursuit ofReal Islamic Logic.23 About this phenomenon the following can be said:

• The appearance of Arabic jargon in the financial world cannot simply be understood as a consequence ofIslamization , in the same way as the appearance of English in many areas of activity is not a symptom of Christianization. It merely indicates the importance of Arab speaking authors and financial workers in the pursuit of Islamic Finance.24

• Islam has Arabic language as a major carrier of its cultural sources in very much the same way (though significantly more pronounced) as Christianity has (medieval) Latin as a source. I am assuming that conceptually Islam can and must be separated from Arabic.25

• Not only language and religion must be separated but to some extent history and language need separation as well. For instanceShari’ah may be replaced by “Islamic Legal Process” and that replacement immediately removes potential misunderstandings. For instance one may think that extremely harsh punishments are characteristic forShari’ah ignoring the fact that the local history of some well-known traditions of the Islamic Legal Process have developed in nomadic societies where imprisonment was not considered a practical option and punishment of an instantaneous form was more easily applicable. In different conditions, however, the Islamic Legal Process leads to different ways of dealing with undesirable behavior.

• It is quite difficult to translate classical Arabic terms into English. For instancegharrar (accepting an excessive downside risk) is forbidden in Islamic Finance but explanations of this limitation invariably involve digressions into the meaning of the termgharrar . The concept of Islamic Finance should not be allowed the degree of freedom to proclaim thatgharrar is forbidden whatever it means so to say, thus leaving those who don’t master Arabic uninformed about which behavioral limitation is imposed by means of this proclamation.26

7. Currently Real Islamic Logic may be considered to be about as plausible or implausible as Islamic Economics with the difference that the phrase Islamic Economics is widely used. In spite of being often mentioned Islamic Economics has not really come off the ground except for its specialized financial branch.

8. Islamic Finance acquires significant visibility and profile from a single assumption namely the prohibition of interests. Opinions about the foundations of this prohibition vary from a fully religious grounding (promising no economic advantages compliant with Islamic social objectives) to a fully economic grounding (expecting that this prohibition will contribute significantly to the reduction of phenomena of individual hardship27 and of structural crisis). At a closer inspection Islamic Finance is based on a combination of restrictions amongst which interest prohibition is only the most well-known ingredient. These other restrictions are:

• Avoidance of excessive downside risks.

• Non-reliance on excessive upside chances (gamble).

• Sold items must exist at the time of transaction (but payment may be deferred).

• All parties involved in a sales transaction must have comparable and complete information about what is being sold.

• Parties involved in a financial transaction may not be forced into participation.

9. Real Islamic Logic has no counterpart to the dogma of interest prohibition. That is no single element carries significantly more visibility than other elements. If any counterpart to the above concise specification of Islamic Finance must be found it consists of a cluster of elements for which the following listing may be a candidate:

• Inconsistencies abound, andparaconsistency is the best one may aim for. In particular:

– Revealed sources are a fundamental source of the body universally quantified assertions from which reasoning must take place.

– The totality of revealed sources is not claimed to be consistent. (Many inconsistent subsets may exist.) Informed scholars must resolve contradictions when needed.

– Original eye-witness accounts produce evidence, and so do indirect testimonies.

These may have higher priority than the original source facts these accounts are commenting upon. This also holds if the source facts are understood in a metaphoric fashion.Proximity in time to the causes of creation of the original sources (for instance measured by means of counting number of intermediate witnesses) increases confidence.

– Science (including logic and mathematics) may produce valid assertions which may be inconsistent with revealed sources. Scientific fact wins out against revealed fact, moving the latter into a metaphoric status, which is then in need of explanation by interpreting scholars.

– A improved level of knowledge of science may lead to modified assertions to which a higher degree of confidence is assigned.Ordinary resolution of inconsistencies amongst scientific results.

• Distributed and autonomous humanjudgement performed by groups of informedscholars plays and will play a major role in legal decision making which may overrule at any time all formalized deduction from acquired database of accepted legal assertions. As a consequence:

– Islamic legal reasoning cannot become outdated, it is essentially a contemporary phenomenon, and, – the Islamic Legal Process proceeds concurrently at different locations and different courts may judge quite differently about similar cases at the same time,28 and, – logic is supposed to be supportive of this mechanism and must not in any way be construed as an “objective” replacement of conscious group decision making by informed scholars.

• Resolution of contradictions makes use of geographically based priorities, with local Islamic courts having more impact than distant ones,29 recent courtjudgements have more relevance than older ones of the same court.30

• Altogether Real Islamic Logic deals with (at least) eight priority mechanisms at the same time:

– priority of science over revelation, – priority of improved science over previous scientific findings, – priority of confirmed interpretation (if sources are understood metaphorically) over revelation, – priority of direct witness reports over indirect ones, – priority of propositions put forward by highly regarded scholars over propositions produced by less highly regarded ones, – priority of propositions put forward by directly involved (concerning the issue at hand) individual scholars overjudgements made by individual scholars from a more distant position, – priority of recent courtjudgements over olderjudgements of the same court, – priority of nearby (physically or community wise) courtjudgements over more distant ones.

As it stands human decision making is essential to balance the relative weights that must be assigned to these different priorities.31

The simultaneous presence of a number of priority mechanisms renders Real Islamic Logic astonishingly complex but it constitutes no reason not to analyze its working in detail, on the contrary, it suggest that much work can be done.

4.2 Comparing Crescent-star Finance and Crescent-star Logic

Crescent-star Logic stands for Real Islamic Finance stripped from its political and religious objectives. Similarly Crescent-star Finance is Islamic Finance stripped from its religious, political and ideological objectives. Both themes can be contemplated and advanced by non-muslims . There is a difference, however, because for a non-muslim Islamic Finance represents a reasonable comprehensible deviation from conventional finance and the effect of adherence to that deviation can be investigated in an impartial way both in theory by way of making use of thought experiments and in practice by means of observation of real or of artificial (that is experimental) economic processes.

Work on Crescent-star Finance may, at least in principle, reveal weak points concerning Islamic Finance that need to be taken into account bymuslims pursuing Islamic Finance in its full meaning. It may also lead to the discovery of new financial products which Islamic scholars are likely to consider morally adequate (halal ).

At this early stage Crescent-star Logic is a hypothetical matter altogether because the inclusion and exclusion of formal techniques as well as philosophical methods for Real Islamic Logic needs to be worked out from an application perspective. Nevertheless a stage can be imagined where Crescent-star Logic can be abstracted from real Islamic Logic in way comparable to the way logic programming has been obtained from programming in PROLOG.