The Islamic and Western Approaches to the Criterion of Knowledge and the Political Position of People

No doubt, knowledge or cognition serving as a criterion on which the analysis and evaluation of human consciousness are based has a pivotal role in forming man’s view of the existence, in illustrating man’s particular system of thought as well as in processing ideas, paradigms, policies and strategies, norms, and insights. Hence, it seems very essential to trace and discover the criterion of knowledge in the proposed theories about various human realms, a criterion that occupies a highest position when it is used as a yardstick for making a distinction between legal and political systems, and a judgment on their efficiency.In this article, the main issue is to make clear the real position of people by showing the real criterion of knowledge. This, in turn, makes it possible to evaluate and criticize the criterion of knowledge in the political thought of the West, thus providing us with a test of true knowledge and the ways to attain it in accordance with the Qur’anic teachings, on the one hand, and to analyze the political position of people influenced by these two systems of thought on the other.