Critical Perspectives on Accounting 31 (2015) 6474

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Critical Perspectives on Accounting

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cpa

Critical Muslim intellectuals thought: Possible contributions

to the development of emancipatory accounting thought
Rania Kamla *
Heriot Watt University, School of Management and Languages, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Received 7 April 2013
Received in revised form 31 December 2014
Accepted 22 January 2015
Available online 28 May 2015

This paper provides an overview of the intellectual debates of a number of Critical Muslim
Intellectuals (CMIs) and explores their possible contributions to critical accounting
research. The paper illustrates how CMIs thought based on postcolonial perspectives of
cultural hybridity and second modernity can enrich and inform critical accounting
research attempts to develop an emancipatory accounting project. This paper
demonstrates that CMIs thought and methodology can contribute to challenging the
domination of western/conventional accounting and its claims to objectivity, neutrality
and universality. In particular, the paper highlights how CMIs enlightened approaches to
hermeneutics; their emphasis on spirituality, ethics and liberation theology; their radical
epistemological and methodological research and education agendas offer outwardlooking alternatives to developing accounting thought.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Islam
Critical Islam
Critical Muslim intellectuals
Emancipatory accounting
Religion

1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the intellectual debates of a number of contemporary Muslim
intellectuals to inspire and contribute to the development of an emancipatory accounting project. These Critical Muslim
Intellectuals (CMIs) are representing what is called critical Islam and are proposing exciting and provocative agendas for
critical engagement and debates in the Muslim world especially on issues of historicity, epistemology and interpretation
(Cooper, 1998; Cooper, Nettler, & Mahmoud, 1998; Kersten, 2011). They attempt to develop an Islamic worldview that is
consistent with the modern environment, but also derives from Islams wider civilisational heritage (Kersten, 2011, p. xv;
Cooper et al., 1998). The proposals put forward by these thinkers are emerging as an alternative discourse on Islam that is
now beginning to inuence the Islamic world1. Integral to CMIs thought is a rejection of an essentialist view of what Islam

* Tel.: +44 7731321507.

E-mail address: r.kamla@hw.ac.uk
1
The paper builds on the work of a number of progressive Muslim intellectuals considered part of the contemporary Critical Islam movement.
Specically, the paper builds directly on the writings of Fazlur Rahman (Pakistan); Mohammed Arkoun (Algeria) and Hassan Hana (Egypt). The paper also
builds on other Critical Muslim Intellectuals thought like Abdelkareem Soroush (Iran); Mohammed Talbi (Tunis); Madjed (Malaysia) Husyn Ahmed Amin
(Egypt); Mohamed Abd Jabri (Morocco); Muhammad al-Tahir ibn Ashur (Tunisia); Hassan Al-Turabi (Sudan); Mohammad Abduh (Egypt) and Ismail Ragi AlFarouqi (Palestine). The works of these other intellectuals are summarized in Abu-Zahra (1998), Cooper (1998), Cooper et al. (1998), Nettler (1998), Esposito
and Voll (2001), Vakili, (2001) and Kersten (2011). The author acknowledges that many of these mentioned interpretations of CMIs thought are done by
western authors. This raises a concern about promoting orientalists points of views of Islamic history and thought. The author in this study, in order to
overcome promoting orientalist readings, is careful to check these views against the original work of CMIs, especially Arkoun, Hana and Rahman and her
own knowledge, as a Muslim author, of Islamic history.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.014
1045-2354/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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65

exactly means (Kersten, 2011, p. 113; Vakili, 2001). While CMIs agendas and thought vary and build on vast sources of
knowledge, they share common themes including: (1) rejecting that the Quran and Sunna provide any clear-cut evidence
for the obligation to establish an Islamic state. (2) Asserting that Islam recognizes certain socio-political principles without
ideologising them. (3) Perceiving Islam as timeless and universal, and must therefore be understood in a dynamic way, and
as subject to constant transformation. (4) Arguing that as only God possesses absolute truth, mans understanding of Islam
is always relative, and so the resulting poly-interpretability prevents any authoritative truth claims, stimulating an attitude
of tolerance instead. (Kersten, 2011, pp. 6465).
Islamic thought and Muslims voices are absent or distorted in most social science disciplines in the West generally. Islam
in the West is often perceived as the ultimate opposite trademark to liberalism. Interest in Islamic thought mainly focuses on
the tendency of the Islamic tradition to encourage acts of violence and terrorism, especially against the liberal West
(Mandaville, 2001; Arkoun, 2002). Thus, while the emergence of CMIs thought is taking place throughout the Muslim world,
very few studies have looked at this phenomenon from a global perspective (Kersten, 2011). In accounting, this paper is the
rst to consider the possible contributions of CMIs thought for the development of emancipatory accounting thought. Much
of accounting literature, including critical accounting research, does not engage or link accounting to religious or theological
perspectives when envisioning an emancipatory accounting project. In addition, the few papers that engage with religion
and theology do so from a Christian perspective, ignoring other religious perspectives like those of Islam (Gallhofer &
Haslam, 2004; Jacobs & Walker, 2004). Gallhofer and Haslam (2004, p. 383) maintain that this lack of engagement with
religion in the critical accounting literature could be due to perceptions of religion in that literature as a conservative force in
the service of hegemony, helping to preserve an unjust and exploitive socio-political and economic order, or as an abstract
force dealing with irrelevant issues. For Gallhofer and Haslam (2004, p. 383) aspects of religious and theological thought like
Liberation Theology can be inspirational and insightful for an emancipatory accounting project as they are concerned with
resisting repression and focus on emancipatory praxis. Similarly, for Molisa (2011), there is a need for critical accounting
research to engage more with spiritual dimensions if they are to be able to fulll their desires for developing an emancipatory
accounting project and make sense of emancipation. Jacobs and Walker (2004) also maintain that as critical accounting seeks
to study accounting in its socio-economic and political context, it is useful to explore the interrelationship between
accounting and religion.
This paper, in reviewing CMIs thought and its commonalities with critical accounting thought will contribute to
addressing the aforementioned lacuna in the accounting/critical accounting literature. It will demonstrate how CMIs values,
especially commitment to cultural hybridity and second modernity, are reconcilable with critical and emancipatory
accounting values. CMIs thought and methodology enforce and enrich critical accounting researchers approaches to
critiquing conventional accountings claims to objectivity, neutrality and universality. Therefore, despite that much of the
ground work has been already discussed in critical accounting research in the western literature, introducing CMIs thought
to this debate is necessary in order to build a bridge between western and Islamic thought and contribute to the spirit of
solidarity amongst civilizations; increasing possibilities for intercultural and interreligious encounters in the accounting
eld and beyond. In the specic context of the Muslim world, CMIs thought can inform Muslim scholarship in the eld of
accounting, contributing to the development of a framework of accounting that can meet the future needs of Muslim
societies, especially the needs of ordinary people. In achieving its objectives, the paper builds on postcolonial theory to
enable better understanding of CMIs ambitious research agenda that is based on concepts such as cultural hybridity and
second modernity. CMIs work mixes Islamic heritage with a comprehensive appreciation of western thought, reecting the
multilayered identity of the postcolonial Muslim intelligentsia to which these thinkers belong (Kersten, 2011, p. 25).
The paper is structured in four sections. Section 2 provides an overview of CMIs philosophical and theoretical approaches
based on postcolonial notions of cultural hybridity and second modernity. Section 3 demonstrates parallels between CMIs
thought, critical and emancipatory accounting thought. It elaborates on how CMIs thought enriches the emancipatory
accounting agenda through challenging dominant methodological and theoretical approaches to accounting; increasing
emphasis on social justice and inclusion of displaced voices; enhancing ethical and moral depth to accounting and promoting
an interreligious and intercultural accounting agenda. Section 4 provides the conclusion.

2. CMIs thought returns to philosophy, cultural hybridity and second modernity

Reviewing CMIs thought requires an appreciation of the historical context and conditions that gave rise, provoked and
inspired these thinkers. CMIs thought, despite being radical and innovative in todays Muslim world, builds on early lost
Islamic philosophical traditions of the rationalist theology school known as Mutazila2, and the ideas of philosophers such as
Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and in particular Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (Kersten, 2011, pp. 45). These emancipatory philosophical
endeavours have been employed in Islamic history, where the period between the 9th and 13th centuries witnessed a
remarkable inuence of Greek philosophy on Islamic thought. Dynamic schools of theology and law at the time emerged

2
Mutazilism (9th to 13th century) was founded in Al-Basra (modern day Iraq). Al-Mutazilas thought was based on the view that it was necessary to
give a rationally coherent account of Islamic beliefs. Al-Mutazila generally had ve theological principles, of which the two most important were the unity
of God and divine justice. The former led them to deny that the attributes of God were distinct entities or that the Quran was eternal, while the latter led
them to assert the existence of free will (Muslim Philosophy, 2012).

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R. Kamla / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 31 (2015) 6474

(Arkoun, 2002). These philosophical traditions dominated Islamic thought until Hanbalism, led by Ibn Taymiyyah, in the
12th and 13th Centuries advocated a return to the Islam of the Salaf al-Saleh (Islamic society at the time of the Prophet, and
the earlier interpretations of Quran and Sunnah) and banned philosophy from Islamic thought, considering it a rival ideology
to religious studies (Kersten, 2011)3. Thereafter, Islamic thought lost sight of many of these revolutionary achievements that
were dismissed by the ulama4 as isolated and were quietly buried (Rahman, 1982, p. 30). The ulama and religious
insititutions often developed close links to political leaderships, leaving Sharia frequently used for political purposes. Since
then, traditional and conservative ulama often maintained orthodoxy and hindered efforts to re-engage with issues that
became considered unthinkable in Islamic thought today (Esposito & Voll, 2001; Arkoun, 2002). Thus, Islamic Sharia and
law applied in the majority of Muslim countries today is static, based on conservative and traditional interpretations, not
applicable to present social problems. This resulted in isolating Muslims and hindered political and socio-economic change
in Islamic societies (Abu-Zahra, 1998).
This stagnation in Islamic thought was also reinforced by the rise of the materialist civilisation in Europe, which resulted
in the expansion and domination of European capitalism into non-European cultures and its counter ideology of liberation
movement that aimed at independence from colonial domination (Arkoun, 2002, p. 14)5. In most Muslim countries, postcolonial states that emerged in the late 1950s used the same strategy as that of the French Third Republic to unite their
nations in line with the principles of the Republic, with a much more authoritarian and intolerant style of governance. In
Muslim countries, the so-called socialist and liberal regimes imposed censorship on intellectual and cultural activities. In
addition to this censorship from above, another form of censorship manifested from below, imposed by public opinion,
especially on matters related to religion. Many intellectuals came to interiorize this dual control in the name of the Nation, or
the religion, adding self-censorship to that already imposed from outside (Arkoun, 2002, p. 13). Thus, while Europe
constructed an intellectual and cultural modernity from the 16th century onward, the Muslim world was unable to play a
role in this development. It further moved away from its own heritage of practicing philosophy and theology and
accumulated an array of issues that were deemed unthinkable (Arkoun, 2002)6.
In this context of intellectual stagnation and inequitable socio-economic and political environment, at the beginning of
the 20th Century, Muslims began questioning their status and attempted to reform their societies. Frustrated by a sense of
inadequacy and weakness in the face of the expanding European imperial and industrial powers the new educated elite
began to break the monopoly of traditional ulama on Islamic thought. Thinkers like the Egyptian Mohammad Abduh
(educated in the West but with deep knowledge of Islamic heritage) emerged and represented new and challenging
intellectual debate related to Islam and Sharia (Esposito & Voll, 2001). In the late 20th century, this trend continued, when a
number of intellectuals emerged and challenged the monopoly of traditional ulama over Islamic thought. These thinkers,
called in this paper Critical Muslim Intellectuals (CMIs), are increasingly playing a role in the transformation of their societies
and providing a critique to existing institutions and mentalities and in the making of contemporary Islam (Esposito & Voll,
2001). Many of these CMIs (like Arkoun, Hana and Rahman) share a concern on how the Muslim world should develop and
change in order to join the global community (Abu-Zahra, 1998, p. 84).
CMIs, therefore, represent a new generation of Muslim thinkers in the postcolonial era (Kersten, 2011). Their activism and
critique of dominant institutions, conservative ulama and thought as well as their vision for renewal and reform in the
contemporary Muslim world are placing them as a possible alternative to the role of religious scholars in Muslim societies
and the role of intellectuals in modern secular societies (Esposito & Voll, 2001). These CMIs are mainly academics
specializing in the study of Islam in universities at home and abroad. They have deep understanding of Islamic heritage and
of the Western academe in the humanities and social sciences (Kersten, 2011; Cooper, 1998). In writing this paper and
attempting to summarize CMIs thought, a signicant difculty emerged. These thinkers come from diverse cultures and
provinces spreading from North Africa to the Middle East and Southeast Asia. They offer voluminous amount of publications.
Thus, addressing their varied agendas on Islamic thought requires addressing the different sources of Islamic knowledge as
well as western social sciences. Despite the diversity and variety of their thought, their interests and agendas link and
overlap signicantly. Commonalities amongst CMIs thought stems from their philosophical approaches that are inspired by
Mutazilas schools of thought and disciplines. CMIs consider these approaches to provide an endogenous methodology for
studying religion (Kersten, 2011, p. 157).

3
Ibn Taymiyyah and the Hanbali school of thought emerged in troubled times in the Muslim world during the Mongol invasion, creating an environment
where Muslims perceived a need to return to the past and to increasingly use religion to oppose and call for jihad against those who are perceived as enemies
(Muslim Philosophy, 2012).
4
The term ulama refers to Muslim scholars trained in Islamic law and tradition.
5
Other factors and events have also contributed to hindering intellectual and critical thought in the Muslim world. For example, the Crusades attacks on
the Muslim world were devastating and resulted in the withdrawal and distrust between the Islamic world and the Western world. Other factors include the
continued schism between Sunni and Shiaa Muslims and thought. This schism has also continued until this day to shape conicts in the Islamic world and to
hinder intellectual exchange between the two sects (cf. Arkoun, 2002).
6
For instance, debates on whether the Quran is eternal or created were commonplace in the tenth and eleventh century amongst Muslim theologians
and philosophers especially those following Al-Mutazala rational thought. Debates on such issues in todays Islamic environment in general are considered
unthinkable (Arkoun, 2002). Another example of issues that are not openly debated in todays Islamic traditional thought are debates on the Qurans
historiography, i.e. in relation to how the Quran was written and compiled; how the written documents went through a process of selection and
marginalization of some issues (Tatar, 1998; Arkoun, 2002).

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67

It could be said that CMIs share a common feature of postcolonial cultural hybridity (Kersten, 2011, p. 12; Cooper, 1998).
Cultural hybridity is a theme in postcolonial studies, which refers to the in-between space, which can neither be reduced
to the self nor the other, neither to the First nor to the Third World, neither to the master nor to the slave. Hybridity forms the
place where new meaning can be produced (Kersten, 2011, p. 35). Contemporary CMIs discourses on hybridity give way to
what is termed second modernity which unlike the drive of rst modernity towards a universalism of global equality, . . .
tries to synthesize universalism, relativism, nationalism and ethnicism, as well as . . . religious diversity. In this second
modernity to be universal is to be more responsive to diversity and particularity. It also means that people should be less
tenaciously attached to their cultures of origin and explore instead the new possibilities that cosmopolitanism opens up
(Kersten, 2011, p. 37; see also Calhoun, 1995 for similar discussions on universality). Hybridity and second modernity
implies that conicting philosophical positions are placed in conversation with each other and are based on a sympathetic
and careful reading of counter-positions. The paradigm shift becomes a precondition for implementing a dynamic Islamic
qh or methodology. CMIs, therefore, attempt to retain associations between a number of dichotomies such as between
being and becoming, man and God, mind and matter, reason and intuition, science and religion, sacred and profane, subject
and object, thinking and action (Kersten, 2011, p. 112).
CMIs hermeneutical approaches informed by cultural hybridity and second modernity have signicant epistemological
implications on understanding religious knowledge (as one aspect of many branches of human knowledge). CMIs argue that
religious knowledge is not divine by virtue of its divine subject matter, and it should not be confused with religion itself
(Vakili, 2001, p. 154). While Muslims perceive the Quran as the Word of God providing all the believers with clear, eternal,
indisputable norms, teachings and ideal commandments to enlighten this life and lead to Salvation in the next, CMIs point to
that, throughout history, the scholars of Islam (whether Sunni or Shiaa) have interpreted the texts (Quran, Sunnah and
teachings of earlier scholars) differently and through different methodologies (like linguistics, logic, Aristotelian philosophy
or contemporary hermeneutics). These interpretations are also inuenced by the world-views of the particular scholar who
possesses a distinct understanding of the world, nature and a Muslims place in both. Thus, while religion itself is sacred,
there is nothing sacred about human understanding of it. Any attempt to interpret the Quran in a literalist and rigid way can
crush its spirit, and therefore, it is neither possible nor desirable. Attempts of interpretations should be continuous as there
is always both room and necessity for new interpretations (Rahman, 1982, pp. 144145). The texts meanings, therefore, are
continuously deconstructed and transformed to produce understandings that surpass previous meanings (Arkoun, 2002;
Harrison, 2010)7.
CMIs methodological approaches provide accounting research and knowledge with alternative worldviews that
emphasize historicity combined with transcultural dynamics and endogenous methodology. These all have revolutionary
and radical implications for mainstream accounting research and knowledge. They imply that in accounting research there is
a possibility to combine advanced methodologies developed in social sciences in the West (like hermeneutics, discourse
analysis, and positive research methodologies) with endogenous methodologies developed in particular contexts like that in
the Islamic world including the Su, Mutazila, kalam (theology) and usul-al-qh. The next section will elaborate further on
the implications of CMIs thought and methodology on the developed of an emancipatory accounting project.
3. CMIs thought: Demonstrating parallels with critical and emancipatory accounting
Critical accounting research has made signicant advances in providing a critique of the way that mainstream accounting
perceives the accounting phenomenon as technical and apolitical, displacing other ways of researching and understanding
accounting. According to critical accounting researchers there is a need for alternative and new insights into accounting that
can challenge the mainstream dominant understanding of accounting and study accounting in action in its organizational,
socio-economic and political contexts (Chua, 1986; Tinker, 2004). Critical accountants problematized how conventional
accounting approaches build on neo-classicalism intellectual developments in the elds of business, accounting and nance
and tend to divide fact from value, the real from the ideal, the positive from the normative, the ethicist from the realist and
most devastating of all the secular from the non-secular (Tinker, 2004, p. 459). Accounting, in this context, became a tool
for efciency and control for the purpose of capital accumulation and protability. Here, the discipline of accounting has
abandoned the role of philosophy in providing the ethical and moral breadth that informed the early periods of the
enlightenment project and social sciences (Tinker, 2004, p. 460). A number of critical accounting researchers, therefore,
engaged in promoting an emancipatory accounting framework that critique the limitations of conventional accounting and
envisage new roles for accounting and accountants that are concerned with social justice, resolving social conicts and
improving humans well-being (rather than just be concerned with economic transactions) (Chua, 1986; Tinker & Neimark,
1988; Dillard, 1991; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2003, 2004; Molisa, 2011). CMIs approaches can contribute to this emancipatory
project through challenging dominant methodological and theoretical approaches in conventional accounting; shifting

7
CMIs hermeneutical approaches build and extend the works of numerous intellectuals such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure, Hans-Georg
Gadamer, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Wilhelm Dilthey, Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricur, and Toshihiko Izutsu (Tatar, 1998, p. 132). What is common amongst
most CMIs (like Rahman and Arkoun whose works are considered closely in this study) is that they are departing from the dominant literal interpretations
that dominate Islamic texts understandings today and rejecting an authoritative orthodox interpretation. They, rather, employ alternative theories of
meaning. In doing so, they reject that the meaning of the text is passively received" and embrace that different interpretations of the Quran can arise from
different interpretive contexts (Harrison, 2010, p.217).

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R. Kamla / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 31 (2015) 6474

accounting emphasis to concerns with social justice and the inclusion of silenced voices; providing an ethical and moral
breadth to accounting thought and promoting interreligious and intercultural approaches to accounting.
3.1. Challenging dominant methodological and theoretical approaches to accounting thought
CMIs generally have developed creative (and controversial as far as the Islamic world is concerned) methodological and
epistemological alternatives combining recent achievements in western humanities scholarship with knowledge of Islams
civilisational heritage. CMIs methodological and epistemological approaches perceive knowledge as provisional and reject
authority in knowledge (Nettler, 1998). Thus, the closed ofcial corpus of the Islamic logosphere must be subject to
discourse analysis and hermeneutics (Kersten, 2011, p. 204)8. Under this methodology, the religious phenomenon is one
aspect of human life and should be understood according to historical events. This does not undermine religion nor trivialize
it. On the contrary, religion is strengthened as it is interpreted against the empirical standards of history (Nettler, 1998).
CMIs, therefore, give priority to a historical perspective of epistemology over a descriptive approach to what Islam means.
The Quran, for them, should be understood in the context in which it was revealed in order to avoid abstract understandings
of its text and the manipulation of the text by political Islamists and governments (Nettler, 1998; Arkoun, 2002; Kersten,
2011)9. For CMIs, like Rahman (1982, p. 5), the Quran and Islamic heritage occurred in the light of history and against a social
historical background. The Quran is a response to that situation, and for the most part it consists of moral, religious, and
social pronouncements that respond to specic problems confronted in concrete historical situations. Islamic reform and
renewal is, thus, only achieved if the historical study of Islamic heritage is understood through new knowledge and
principles (Filali-Ansari, 1998; Esposito & Voll, 2001). In order to overcome conditions of unthought in the Muslim world,
CMIs encourage intellectuals to pursue revolutionary hermeneutical (ijtihad) methods in order to achieve real advances in
the collective consciousness (Filali-Ansari, 1998, p. 170). Renewal requires a new form of ijtihad (the making of decisions in
Islamic law without solely depending on the conjunctions and views of other inuential scholars) and continuous
reinterpretations of Islamic texts where the concern is not only to go to old books to dig out bits and pieces but to also go
back to the roots, and create a revolution at the level of principles (Esposito & Voll, 2001, p. 127). Many CMIs insist that this
ijtihad is not merely the responsibility of the ulama and theologians but the whole community (Esposito & Voll, 2001).
For CMIs, therefore, religion and belief can only be strengthened in being constantly measured and interpreted against
empirical standard of history and expansion of knowledge (Nettler, 1998, p. 131). Indeed, CMIs argue that the Quran and the
Prophets teachings give knowledge a very high value and gaining knowledge is connected to better faith. Here, knowledge
required is knowledge that can expand the vision and horizon of the person. It is not limited to issues of theology or
knowledge of the ends of life but also to knowledge about the universe, humanity and history (Rahman, 1982, p. 135). A
consistent theme amongst CMIs, therefore, is to situate religious knowledge, including theology, in a wider framework of
human science in general, including natural sciences but particularly history, philosophy and social sciences. This makes
their approaches to knowledge signicantly anthropological and implies an ambitious interdisciplinary research and
education agendas that are international and include historians, social scientists and ethicists (Rahman, 1982; Cooper, 1998;
Kersten, 2011). Here, the most important task of an education system is to develop critical thinkers that can problematise all
systems that claim to produce meaning (Kersten, 2011, p. 196).
The above mentioned methodological and hermeneutical approaches imply a signicant departure and critique to the
dominant notion in conventional accountings thought, where reality can be explained through numbers. As some critical
accountants pointed out, accounting, in the context of modernity and capitalism, is mostly considered a scientic and
objective discipline based on instrumental reasoning and devoted to bringing economic efciency and progress (Davis,
Menon, & Morgan, 1982; Tinker, Merino, & Neimark, 1982; Chua, 1986; McKernan & MacLullich, 2004). This has implied
ontological and epistemological boundaries that limit accounting research to economic and market-based theoretical
perspectives (especially neo-classical perspectives) and allowed for the domination of positivism and quantitative methods
in accounting research. CMIs insistence on hermeneutics, discourse analysis and historical methodological approaches,
thus, challenges the dominant decision-usefulness thesis in mainstream accounting research and allows for the emergence
of different, equally important, bodies of accounting knowledge. It implies the need for greater emphasis on long-term
historical studies and detailed historical explanations like ethnographic studies of organizational structures and processes
which show their societal linkages rather than quantitative methods and mathematical or statistical modeling that provide
dominant concepts of value beneting the interests of dominant groups (cf. Chua, 1986, p. 623). Here, there is a need for
greater acknowledgement in accounting research of the inuence of the worldview of the researcher on the research, which
could lead to the realization that accounting information could be attributed diverse and different meanings. Such
appreciation is important in accounting research as it makes the researcher aware of his/her approach and helps the

8
These include the body of Quran commentaries (tafsir); the hadith collections containing the Traditions of the Prophet" and key sources of his
biography (sira), as well as mystical texts (Kersten, 2011, p.204).
9
In the meantime, the process of interpretation should be mindful of the Quranic teachings as a whole (weltanschauung) before transposing the ethical
guideline to todays environment so that each meaning understood, each law enunciated, and each objective formulated will cohere with the rest (Rahman,
1982, p.5). Here, Rahman proposes a double movement" methodology from the present situation, to Quranic times and back to the present. His approach is
linked to Gadamers hermeneutical approach in relation to the Fusion of Horizons". Rahman differs from Gadamer, however, in that Rahman had more faith
in the ability of the interpreter to reach an objective understanding of the text in its original context (Rahman, 1982; Harrison, 2010; Kersten, 2011).

R. Kamla / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 31 (2015) 6474

69

researcher to become more sensitive to the multi-faceted nature of the phenomenon being investigated and to broaden and
rene the strategy of research that is to be adopted (Davis et al., 1982, p. 316).
Critique of neutrality in CMIs and critical accounting literature does not infer that the researcher will become irrational
or will abandon attempts to give rational explanations for theories of choice. It rather infers that accounting reality should be
understood as being emergent and changing with the socioeconomic, historical and political contexts. This helps
understanding of accounting in action rather than constructing rigorous but articial models of human action which
presume rational consensual goals (Chua, 1986, p. 618; Hopwood, 1983). It also helps avoiding abstract understandings of
the accounting craft divorced from practice and enables better understanding of the use of accounting information and
numbers to legitimize particular sectional interests (Chua, 1986, p. 617)10.
Furthermore, CMIs commitment to second modernity discussed in section two coincides with critical accountants calls
for paradigms shifts in accounting research. Paradigms that are considered conicted in accounting research (like
functionalist, interpretive, radical structuralist or radical humanist) could open up to conversation with each other and to
understanding of different approaches contribution to the development and improvement of accounting knowledge and
research (Chua, 1986) without the dominance or the displacement of one approach over the other in explaining the
accounting phenomenon. Instead of different approaches (or paradigms) being sought independently, each mode of
research should preferably be informed by, and serve to heighten, our awareness of their respective limitations. And, thus,
knowledge of everyday accounting may be developed that is not only empirical and/or interpretive but also constructively
critical (Willmott, 1983, p. 403). Here a paradigm shift becomes possible and associations between dichotomies such as
between subjective and objective, positive and normative, sacred and secular, scientic and traditional are established. This
revolutionary approach to accounting research broadens the horizons of conventional accounting thought and questions the
positive approach claim to realism. It allows accounting the potential to engage in social and political issues and address
issues of inequality and injustice (Tinker et al., 1982; Moerman, 2006).
The concern of CMIs with the way that conservative ulama dominate the sphere of Quranic and Islamic texts
interpretations, reects also a concern addressed in critical accounting research on how accounting experts and the
profession have dominated the sphere of developing accounting thought and standards. This domination has created an
aura of expertise, excluding non-experts and making it difcult for them to understand morality and values incorporated in
these accounting principles, standards and interpretations (cf. Reiter & Williams, 2002; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004). Reiter
and Williams (2002) explain how the accountancy profession in the US has for long resisted change, especially to the
domination of neo-economic theories in their attempts to guarantee that control and power remains with the elite. One way
to challenge such domination is to challenge censorship in the profession and academia where the accounting craft is
perceived in technical terms, claiming objectivity and neutrality and thus resulting in hegemonic interpretations of
accounting by the profession and mainstream researchers that end-up claiming universal validity and displacing other more
radical interpretations (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004, p. 394; Hopwood, 1983).
CMIs insistence on hermeneutics, endogenous methodological approaches as well as interdisciplinary and critical
research and education agendas, mirror critical accounting researchers calls for resisting Eurocentrism in its vision to
transform and improve accounting social practices (Moerman, 2006). This implies that dominant accounting thought and
inuential accounting texts (including accounting laws, regulation, standards and text books) that often reinforce
mainstream and conventional views of accounting and its role in society (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004; Sikka, 2012) need to be
historically and contextually re-read and interpreted to illuminate their socio-economic consequences. Authoritative
accounting texts are specic manifestations of certain social and historical inuences. They include social and moral
pronouncements that are a response to historical and social contexts mainly shaped in the Anglo-American settings as a
result of the expansion of the material civilization and capitalism in the West. Thus, they reect relative and context-bound
principles that cannot and should not be treated as ultimately universal (Vollmer, 2003; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004).
Mirroring CMIs concerns with advocating interdisciplinary and critical education and research agendas implies that any
concern with an emancipatory accounting project should also be concerned with the educational practices of accounting
whether for accountant graduates or for the public (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004). It should be concerned with developing
critical accounting thinkers that are able to problematise current and dominant systems and structures. This can be achieved
through introducing interdisciplinary education (and research) agendas rather than a specialist and technical ones. This
critical and multidisciplinary agenda introduces anthropological, historical and philosophical dimensions to the study and
understanding of accounting and its impact on society. It introduces the analytical-critical skills needed in accountants in
order to provide the necessary intellectual tools to counter the hegemonic domination of un-critical and instrumental
mainstream accounting thought. It builds on both secular and non-secular dimensions in order to foster an intimate dialogue
between the two for the development of accounting in society. Further, the incorporation of philosophy and critical
reasoning equips students with analytical-critical skills needed to generate new ideas and question conservative and
mainstream perceptions of accounting (Morgan, 1983; Tinker, 2004). This will allow students, researchers and practitioners
to interpret, understand and even change the interrelationships between accounting and society and the structural conicts

10
For CMIs, as for critical accountants like Tinker (1991), development of Islamic (and accounting) thought does not entirely negate old tradition (or
conventional accounting) but builds on, develop and take the viable and positive from the old (see the debate on the negation of the negation in Tinker
(1991) and Solomons (1991).

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embedded in accounting discourse (Morgan, 1983; Chua, 1986; Dillard, 1991). Further, the holistic and interdisciplinary
approach to accountings education promotes the linking and integrating between micro- and macro-levels of analysis and
avoids the conventional accounting academe distinction between nancial and managerial accounting through the
introduction of a broader range of theoretical perspectives (Chua, 1986, p. 625; Cooper, 1983; Hopwood, 1983; Roslender &
Dillard, 2003; Tinker, 2004). In this context, Reiter and Williams (2002) argue that in order to provide a more progressive
accounting education, there is a need for accounting researchers to become interested in research carried out outside their
specialized accounting journals. Further, more interdisciplinary journals related to accounting should be created in order to
suggest different research approaches to solving accounting problems (Reiter & Williams, 2002).
3.2. A concern with social justice and the inclusion of silenced voices in accounting
Cultural hybridity championed by CMIs challenges privileged readers of traditions and the bearers of the true Islam
(Kersten, 2011, pp. 3536). To achieve this, Arkoun (2002, p. 29) proposes a method of Emerging Reason in order to rethink
problems related to the articulation of religion. The Emerging Reason method is:
Interested in all types of silenced voices throughout history, like all those voices silenced today in Islamic contexts,
either by ofcial censorship or by the pressures of public opinion manipulated by political activists; it reactivates the
persecuted, innovative mind, it refuses to write a history of thought, literature and the arts based exclusively on the socalled representative authors and works selected, in fact, by the dominant tradition in each period and each milieu.
CMIs, thus, advocate a hermeneutical philosophy to develop a radically new style of Islamic theology, giving a central role
to the idea that the interpretation of both the Quran and core Islamic religious concepts must be sensitive to the perspective
of those who are at the margins of the social structure within which interpretation occurs. This hermeneutical philosophy
will liberate Islam from the narrow interpretations claiming to be universal and objective while really being just the
product of ideology motivated by conservative political and social agendas (Harrison, 2010, p. 216; Arkoun, 2002). In this
context, CMIs point out that the Islamic concept of tra as the natural faculty unifying feature of human nature implies
inclusiveness and pluralist understanding of human religiosity. Fitra yields the universal human principles of goodness,
mutual respect, equality of views and doctrines and peace as key to understanding the world and the relationships with God
for all humans (Kersten, 2011, p. 92; Nettler, 1998).
A hermeneutical philosophy based on emerging Reason and the concept of tra implied that many CMIs engaged in
Liberation Theology. For instance, Rahman (1982, p. 5) points to how the Quran connects issues of polytheism with
exploitation of the poor, malpractices in trade, and general irresponsibility towards society. The Quran has put forward the
idea of a unique God to whom all humans are responsible and the goal of eradication of gross socioeconomic inequity. While
the Quraan puts emphasis on eternal issues like belief in God and the Day of Judgment, it links closely belief in God to human
accountability and action (Rahman, 1982, p. 5). Socioeconomic justice and redistribution of wealth are highlighted as
important principles in Islam on the basis of trusteeship and accountability to God (wealth is the wealth of God on which we
are entrusted, and thus we do not have the right to monopolize it, exploit it or misuse it) (Esposito & Voll, 2001). The message
to Muhammad, therefore, was not only about demolishing of a plurality of gods, but a sustained and determined effort to
achieve socioeconomic justice (Rahman, 1982, p. 15). Theology and religion, thus, can be used in order to help in mobilizing
the masses and giving them power and liberation. Hana (1981) also points out that in Islamic societies the religious
structures have reected the political structures and aided the elites in gaining control over the masses. Liberation Theology,
thus, enables the countering of exploitation through using hermeneutics to reexamine the structure of inherited belief
structures and systems (Hana, 1981; Esposito & Voll, 2001). Hermeneutics and reinterpretations of Islamic heritage and
texts, therefore, should have the aim of bringing freedom, social justice, equity and mass mobilization. Theology is not only
about obtaining eternal rights by knowing the truth instead it is a theoretical analysis of action where the central concern
is the conduct of people. Belief in God is thus related to the founding of an ethical based sociopolitical order that enables the
formation of a good and just society (Esposito & Voll, 2001, p. 87; Hana, 1981; Rahman, 1982). For Rahman (1982, pp. 19
20), Quranic emphasis on socioeconomic justice and egalitarianism implies that any legislation that follows from the Quran
should have social justice as its end goal. Extracting general principles from the Quran requires these principles to build on
the broad, humane principles of justice, mutual help, and mercy worked into the fabric of the Quranic legislation.
Parallel to CMIs concern to open up the methodological approaches in Islamic theology to all types of silenced voices,
critical accountants critique the conned methodological paradigms and theoretical approaches to researching accounting
that displaces peoples voices and perceptions as active markers of their social reality (Chua, 1986, p. 610; Tinker et al.,
1982; Shearer, 2002). They argue that accountings thought should be open to the participation of the general public and not
remain limited to the spheres of traditional experts (Sikka, Willmott, & Lowe, 1989; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004). Emerging
Reason championed by CMIs implies an interest in the voices of those on the margins rather than merely the voices of those
who are privileged in society and considered representatives of the accountancy profession. Critical accountants argue that
the narrow gateways to researching accounting limits the inuence of accounting research on praxis, especially in issues
related to social justice and struggle and undermines issues of power and domination in society and organizations
(Moerman, 2006, p. 173). For critical accountants, accounting research, therefore, should incorporate methodology that
draws attention to the social conditions that are creating and sustaining current socio-economic systems (Davis et al., 1982;
Tinker et al., 1982; Cooper, 1983). Sikka (2012), for instance, argues that there is a need to expose the role of the profession

R. Kamla / Critical Perspectives on Accounting 31 (2015) 6474

71

and accountancy rms in supporting capital and the advantaged groups in society that earn the social status they enjoy.
Accounting research can contribute to this reection through exploring ways to identify the oppressed in society and ways to
help them through questioning and changing societal structures and giving them a voice (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004; Sikka,
2012). To do so, there is a need to illuminate how accounting has naturalized the interest of capital and ignored the welfare of
the working classes, contributing to bad distribution of wealth and to nancial crises (Sikka, 2012). Accounting values
dominating mainstream accounting research like social efciency and economic progress often provide unequal, coercive
and exploitive exchange mechanisms as they serve the interests of the powerful in society by providing them with nancial
information as well as rules and regulations that will assist the market in efciently allocating resources (Chua, 1986;
McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Jacobs, 2011). Accounting practices concentrate on investors, managers and agency costs
ignoring other forms of value creation like employees and the State. Accounting, thus, has become an integral part of the
system rather than providing a tool to check, control or challenge it (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Sikka, 2012). In this
context, professional rhetorical claims to serve the public interest and contribute to the social welfare of society are hard to
verify or observe (Sikka et al., 1989; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004).
The above-mentioned mainstream understanding and role of accounting, while dominant, is not inevitable (Gallhofer &
Haslam, 2004; Jacobs, 2011). Accounting, through education and engagement, can be turned to serve notions of justice,
equality and democracy (Jacobs, 2011, p. 512). Thus, there is a need for accounting information to be mobilized as an
educational force to make oppression visible to people and groups that are facing this oppression (Gallhofer & Haslam,
2004; Sikka, 2012). New insights that can be gained from the Emerging Reason methodology that aim towards brining
freedom, social justice and the mobilization of the masses, can illuminate to students and researchers the conditions of
sexual, racial and class discrimination and their relationship to accounting; dimensions that are scarce in mainstream
accounting research (Hopwood, 1983; Cooper, 1983; Chua, 1986; Sikka, 2012). They can help students better understand the
interrelationship between accounting, economic crises and socioeconomic conicts in society (Morgan, 1983; Tinker &
Neimark, 1988; Dillard, 1991). Additionally, Building on the concept of tra, implies overcoming the arrogance of scientic
reasoning that alienates the masses and their values and does not allow for their voices to be heard. The task of accounting
research and education, thus, should include an investigation into peoples experiences (especially the disadvantaged) and
their interrelationship with accounting and accounting information constructs. For instance, stories and insights into the
lives of people living on low-income and have limited opportunities to access education and training can make visible the
impact of unequal distribution of wealth and the role of accounting in it (Sikka, 2012). To refuse to incorporate these insights
into accounting research and education or to marginalize methods like interviews, case studies, oral history and reexive
stories in accounting research is to deprive accounting thought from essential insights that can help renew and emancipate
accountings theoretical positions and strategies of intervention (Chua, 1986; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004; Moerman, 2006).
3.3. Emphasizing an ethical and moral breadth to accounting
Many CMIs argue that spirituality still has a place in secularization theory advocated by Nietzsche and Weber (Kersten,
2011, p. 42). Social science and theories, for them, should be open to what religion can offer to humanity, especially in terms
of ethics. In the meantime, religion should also be open to advances in social sciences and theories, which provide guidance
for people on both intellectual and spiritual grounds.
CMIs emphasis on hermeneutics prevents Muslims from claiming universal and ultimate truths on historicallyconditioned circumstances. CMIs, however, still perceive that Islam and the Quran hold social and ethical notions that can
be transcended in time and place and can provide universal moral guidance to humanity (Nettler, 1998, p. 131). For CMIs,
Quranic revelation is rst and foremost a guide to action and not a source of knowledge (Kersten, 2011, p. 166; Hana,
1981). Islam is, thus, a universal set of values applicable to every human being, while at the same time respecting the
historicity and cultural particularities of how these values unfolded on a collective level in human societies (Kersten, 2011,
p. 83). Whereas Islam claims to be relevant to any time and any place, the doctrine may vary in its external forms
according to time and place. This move from the universal to the particular has introduced an explicitly humanist way of
thinking to dene the relationship between religion and culture (Kersten, 2011, p. 86). Further, CMIs point out that any
careful study of the Quran reveals that ethics are its essence and are what links theology and Sharia law (Rahman, 1982, p.
155; Filali-Ansari, 1998). Rahman (1982, p. 155), for example, maintains that a systematic reading of the Quran reveals a
desire to instate a condition of taqwa (piety) in the human-being where a mental state of responsibility from which an
agents actions proceed but which recognizes that the criterion of judgment upon them lies outside him. Thus, taqwa entails
a sense of responsibility, which is placed as a precondition to morality and requires coherence between the persons mind
(rationality) and heart (spirituality). The displacement of the concept of taqwa in secular societies and the blurred link
between law and morality are resulting in a chaotic state of affairs (Rahman, 1982, p. 156; Kersten, 2011).
CMIs understandings of the link between spirituality, responsibility and accountability, have implications for accounting.
For a start, accounting, like other branches of social science, needs to be open to religion, spirituality and ethics in order to
bring change. The concept of taqwa in Islam emphasizes the link and interdependency between the heart and the mind;
between responsibility and accountability with belief, spirituality and morality. Such a link between the material and the
spiritual is important in order to bring betterment and avoid an unjust society. It offers an alternative to market capitalism
notions where values and moralities are perceived for the home and practicalities for work and where the relentless pursuit
of efciency and prot maximization in accounting practices has displaced other dimensions like ethics, the spiritual and the

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sacred. As many critical accountants point out, accountings morality became merely connected to reason, specically
technical and specialized knowledge (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004; McKernan & MacLullich, 2004; Tinker, 2004).
Mckernan and MacLullich (2004, p. 327) argue that a revolution on the level of principles in accounting will not be
possible as long as accounting thought is divorced from the moral authority and force that religion and spirituality can
provide. For them, the crisis in accounting is mainly a moral one where regulations and laws informed by rationality have
proved to be unable to provide the moral substance on their own. Thus, there is a need for the mystical loving relationship of
the subject and the other to also inform these laws and regulations as they restore authority to nancial reporting and
resolve the crisis it presently faces (McKernan & MacLullich, 2004, p. 334). Emancipatory accounting, therefore, can only be
realized if the crude dichotomy between materialism, spirituality and ethics is abandoned and a holistic approach to change
is adopted (Gallhofer and Haslam, 2004, p. 507; Jacobs, 2011). Therefore, accounting should begin to emphasize and reect
values other than nancial and capitalistic ones. It can begin to focus on communities, the environment, on intangibles and
non-material aspects. Here, accounting and accounting information becomes a guide for action for the betterment of society
rather than merely a source of information for decision-making purposes. This emphasis on betterment is integral to the
emancipatory accounting project (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2003, 2004; Kamla, Gallhofer, & Haslam, 2006; Molisa, 2011).
3.4. Interreligious and intercultural approaches to accounting
While CMIs are open to applying advanced methodologies that were developed in Western thought, they remain very
aware of the tendency of European scholarship in studying humanities to promote itself as universal, threatening alternative
schools of thought (Kersten, 2011). CMIs, therefore, insist on the concept of cultural hybridity to draw attention to the
multiple inuences on modernization beyond the Western inuence. They argue that a failure to take into account these
multiple paths to modernization leads not only to the simplistic assumption of a move in the direction of cultural
uniformity and standardization, but also to the neglect of the inuence of non-Western civilizations . . . on one another . . .
by adopting a world-historical instead of a Eurocentric point of view it becomes possible to recognize cultural particularity as
a global value (Kersten, 2011, pp. 3637). In the meantime, CMIs, like Arkoun, criticize how traditional ulama in Islamic
history have neglected the use of emerging and dynamic methodology that builds on philosophical contributions of early
Muslim philosophers like Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as well as non-Islamic thought and values that enable the salvaging of the
transcultural dynamics between civilizations (Kersten, 2011, p. 201; Cooper, 1998).
Cultural hybridity advocated by CMIs attempts, therefofore, to create a dialogue and exchanges between the periphery
and the center and between different peripheries. This dialogue aims at creating an ironic double consciousness open to
new meanings (Kersten, 2011, p. 38). Such notions of hybridity, modernity (second modernity) and possibilities of exchange
and dialogue allowed CMIs to reconcile and develop Islamic heritage and thought with modern European thought and
science. In this sense, CMIs practice their agency by studying Western consciousness through a Third World consciousness in
a scientic and philosophical way. They are advocates of interreligious and intercultural dialogues based on engaging in a
scholarly fashion with the religious comparative without being apologetic or polemic towards the study of comparative
religions (Esposito & Voll, 2001, pp. 3334). The essence of CMIs approach to interreligious/intercultural dialogue
constitutes the identication of higher principles, which are to serve as the basis for the comparison of various systems of
meanings, of cultural patterns, of moralities, and of religions; the principles by reference to which the meanings of such
systems and patterns may be understood, conceptualized and systematised. Muslim and non-Muslim scholars/students are
thus encouraged to engage in comparative religious studies, which can illuminate these common principles (Esposito & Voll,
2001, p. 34). Examples of these common principles include human responsibility and accountability demanded in all
religions as a key to the realization of the one brotherhood of humankind (Esposito & Voll, 2001, p. 35). The concept of
tawhid (surrender to God) is also a common concept encompassing the three Abrahamic religions. In addition, tra (a
unifying feature of human nature) is considered an aspect of the pluralist understanding of human religiosity (Kersten,
2011, p. 93).
CMIs calls for interreligious/intercultural dialogue also implies intimate dialogue with secular sciences in order to
foster an intellectual dialogue and focusing on the links between religious and non-religious sciences in universities to foster
an Islamic environment of learning (Vakili, 2001, p. 172)11. According to Rahman (1982), secular sciences are linked to
religious ones and are integral to Islamic intellectualism as Muslim scientists are motivated and encouraged by the Qurans
emphasis on seeking knowledge in all spheres including the study of the universe. The study of philosophy provides a muchneeded analytical-critical spirit and generates new ideas that become important intellectual tools for other sciences, not
least for religion and theology (Rahman, 1982, pp. 157158; Arkoun, 2002). For CMIs, philosophy should not be regarded as a
rival but as a supportive tool to religious studies. Philosophy and reason for them are not the same as westernization and
they insist that rational thought is compatible with the Islamic message and is a precondition for renewal and thought in the
Islamic umma (community of believers). Many of the values cherished and advocated by CMIs in their changing vision
parallel the original values of the enlightenment and its notion of emancipation (Kersten, 2011).
CMIs calls for interreligious and intercultural dialogue between Islam and the West have implications for accounting
thought. In talking about emancipatory accounting based on ethics, there is a need to move from the universal to the

11

The purpose here is not to Islamize nonreligious sciences but to provide an interaction between these elds of study (Vakili, 2001).

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73

particular to rethink the relationship between accounting and culture. Accounting practices and values are shaped in certain
socioeconomic contexts and their meanings do not go beyond that context. As CMIs promote a contextual and historical
theology, their thought emphasizes the need of cultural hybridity and differentiated universalism as a challenge to
metanarratives in accounting research (cf. Moerman, 2006, p. 182). In an increasingly multicultural world, therefore,
accounting researchers and learners globally should be exposed to variety of methods and theoretical approaches rather
than be limited to the dominant Anglo-American techniques based on assumptions of uniformity across cultures and social
contexts (Reiter & Williams, 2002, p. 601). This could include the possibility of introducing intellectual debates from outside
the Anglo-American dominant theoretical perspectives like for instance incorporating aspects of Islamic (and other nonWestern, secular or non-secular emancipatory) thought in the accounting research and educations agendas. These
transcultural dimensions are needed in order to enrich accounting knowledge (Morgan, 1983; Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004;
Tinker, 2004). In this context, an emancipatory project of accounting needs to be cautious not to impose a xed
understanding or unsubjective emancipation and to realize that there are no universal or absolute notion of emancipation
(Jacobs, 2011).
Furthermore, accounting could help create this interreligious/intercultural dialogue and global understanding by
pointing to the global interconnectedness of forms of repression and thus help to arrive at common and counter-hegemonic
reading of accounting (Gallhofer & Haslam, 2004, p. 395). As Tinker (2004) explains there is a close connection between
mainstream Western establishments perceptions of Islam today and accounting. Tinker (2004, p. 466) argues that American
militarization in the Middle East and the demonization of Islam and Muslims in the West are examples of a savage political
diversion from an economic depression; a depression triggered by corporate and accounting criminality. Accounting, as the
case with other social sciences, should play a role in drawing peoples attention to the connection between the rhetoric of
Islam as the enemy with the attempts to retain the current social order; progress is only possible by recognizing this
interdependency between the carnage in the Middle East and injustice in Western (especially US) societies in the form of
employment, health care, and stock-market-tied-pension-benets, and all-time record high bankruptcy levels.
Accountants reluctance to illuminate this link makes them complicit in injustice in their own societies and abroad
(Tinker, 2004, p. 466).
The notion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue advocated by CMIs could also encourage engagement between
parties that seem at the opposite sides of the spectrum like critical accounting researcher and religious studies researchers
including those of Islam (Kamla, 2009). In this sense, researchers from these different disciplines need to show an openminded approach to learn from each other in addressing issues like resisting the dominance of neoclassical Western
capitalism, its exploitation of the weak and hostilities to Muslims and the other (Kamla, 2009). This engagement is
important to getting parties to question their positions and reect on them. Only then is an emancipatory accounting project
is possible.
4. Conclusion
This paper has pointed to how CMIs thought based on cultural hybridity and second modernity could be useful (if not
essential) to an emancipatory accounting project. CMIs efforts are a reminder to all accounting researchers and academics of
a need to go beyond the boundaries of mainstream Western accounting if we are to achieve a more emancipatory accounting
project. The critical accounting project in particular could gain from a mutual cooperation with CMIs thought as they both
realize the importance of historical and socioeconomic analysis in social sciences. Thus, the critical accounting project needs
to be more inclusive of progressive religious notions that share its aim in interrogating capitalism and its institutions
including accounting. CMIs cultural hybridity and second modernity approaches could also offer the possibility of radical
and revolutionary changes to the way accounting is addressed in the mainstream. By rejecting objective, instrumental and
universal assumptions that mainly build on Western thought, accounting research can move from nearly exclusive emphasis
on marginalist assumptions to incorporating insights from CMIs critical social science theories. It can also begin to highlight
the amazing diversity of accounting practices in different cultural contexts (Hopwood, 1983, p. 289; Tinker et al., 1982).
CMIs thought illustrates the commonalities and parallels between critical Islamic thought with other religious and
secular perspectives concerned with enhancing social justice and resisting repression. Their thought counters perceptions by
both militant Islamists and the West of the incompatibility of Islam with Western thought. From this it could be concluded
that an emancipatory accounting project requires an inclusive and outward-looking approach to engage with the various
groups, view points and individuals that can inuence the way we perceive accounting and its role in society. At the moment,
the inuence of CMIs thought on accounting or on other social science disciplines is very limited. Nonetheless, in the
decades to come, the demographics in the Muslim world are set to change and educated classes will increase in absolute and
proportional numbers (Kersten, 2011). This will lead to an increased exposure to CMIs thought in social sciences in general.
The Muslim Diaspora and Muslim students and researchers in the West in particular have a role to play in transforming,
articulating and developing CMIs thought in the various disciplines of social sciences including accounting. After all, the
majority of contemporary CMIs were schooled and lived in the West at one stage of their lives. Such transnational
experiences had signicantly enriched CMIs thought and provided them various avenues for interreligious and intercultural
engagements and dialogue (Mandaville, 2001). Critical engagement between Muslim and non-Muslim students, researchers
and practitioners of accounting, therefore, has the potential to produce accounting researchers and practitioners that are
able to reform and challenge the dominance of mainstream accounting thought and practices globally. Such a challenge, it is

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hoped, could bring to the fore more emancipatory forms of accounting that better serve the objectives of equity and social
justice.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Prof. Christine Cooper and the two anonymous reviewers for their very valuable comments, which I
believe have improved the paper signicantly.
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