<![CDATA[This article develops a conceptual framework for examining intellectual rigidity in selected strands of Islamic scholarship through Imre Lakatos’s Research Programme framework. It addresses a recurring tendency to treat historically developed products of ijtihad, including legal methodologies, theological formulations, exegetical approaches, and historiographical narratives, as though they possessed the same non-revisable status as revelation. The article draws on Lakatos’s writings, works by M. Amin Abdullah, Fazlur Rahman, Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, and Mohammed Arkoun, as well as relevant scholarship on Islamic epistemology, usul al-fiqh, Qur’anic interpretation, and kalam. Its analysis focuses on epistemological propositions concerning the relationship between theological commitments and historically situated intellectual formulations. Lakatos’s framework is employed as an analytical adaptation, not as a direct equivalence between revelation and scientific theory. Within this framework, tawhid, the divine origin of revelation, and fundamental ethical commitments function as the limited hard core, whereas historically developed formulations in fiqh, kalam, Qur’anic interpretation, and religious historiography are examined as elements of a revisable protective belt. The article argues that intellectual rigidity may emerge when historically contingent formulations are treated as immune from critical reassessment. It proposes a Lakatosian model consisting of a limited hard core, an identifiable protective belt, and a positive heuristic guided by historical sensitivity, interdisciplinary engagement, and maqasid al-shariah. The model is intended as a conceptual instrument for assessing whether inherited formulations remain responsive to changing intellectual and social conditions.]]>
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