"The intellectual positions held by the adherents of a tradition

can only be understood, MacIntyre insists, in the context of that tradition. There are no texts, theses, or conceptions - of justice and rationality, for instance - in themselves; they exist, and can be evaluated, only as part of this or that tradition, and so far as their criteria for evaluation are concerned, the different traditions are "incommensurable." [19] For all the disagreements within a particular tradition, there remains a broad agreement on which differences are the critical ones and how, or within what limits, to argue over them. There is, however, no such agreement between traditions, and even to understand a rival tradition presupposes that one be immersed in the language of that tradition. This position is at the heart of MacIntyre's quarrel with contemporary liberalism.

 -pg. 4 of Muhammad Qasim Zaman's The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change