From Epistemic Rupture to Dehumanization: An Islamic Critique of Postmodern Thought

Abstract

Postmodernism emerged as a critical reaction against the epistemic certainties of Enlightenment modernity, challenging universal truth, stable meaning, and essentialist conceptions of the human subject. While these critiques initially sought to expose hidden structures of power and domination, this article argues that postmodern epistemology has generated an unintended but profound consequence: the dehumanization of the human being. By rejecting objective truth (Lyotard) , destabilizing meaning through radical textual indeterminacy (Derrida), and reducing knowledge to power relations (Foucault), postmodern thought inaugurates an epistemic rupture that undermines the ontological, moral, and anthropological foundations of human dignity. This rupture manifests in multiple forms of dehumanization, including the erosion of moral accountability, the fragmentation of personal identity, and the detachment of selfhood from biological and moral reality. Contemporary phenomena such as radical identity fluidity, the separation of gender from biological sex, and emerging discourses of species dysphoria are analyzed not as isolated sociocultural developments but as symptomatic expressions of an epistemology that denies human nature and normativity. In this framework, the human being is reduced to a self-constructed project, severed from embodiment, purpose, and moral limits. Against this backdrop, the article advances an Islamic epistemological critique grounded in revelation (waḥy), reason (ʿaql), and the concept of fitrah. Islamic epistemology affirms objective truth, intrinsic human dignity (karāmah al-insān), and moral accountability (taklīf), offering a coherent rehumanizing framework capable of addressing the epistemic and anthropological deficiencies of postmodern thought. The article concludes that the contemporary crisis of the human cannot be resolved within postmodernism itself and that revelational guidance is epistemically necessary for restoring human dignity, meaning, and moral purpose.