There would seem to be little of a sectarian nature about...

There would seem to be little of a sectarian nature about discussions of the law of the excluded middle, for example. What is true about this section of philosophy, however, is its Aristotelian nature, and there can be no doubt that it should properly be regarded as one of the streams flowing from the First Teacher (al-mu allim al-awwal).

(The intention here, it must be pointed out, is not to claim that this part of the philosophy is non-Islamic, as will become clear later; we are merely innocently asking what it means to call it "Islamic", and specifically as regards its subject matter.) It used to be the fashion to use the term "Arabic philosophy" until it was protested that many of the practitioners were not Arabs.

This really is beside the point, as "Arabic" refers almost exclusively to the language, and, while many works have been written, especially latterly, in non-Arabic languages, the main vehicle for the philosophy can justifiably be claimed to be Arabic. However, this is certainly an accidental feature, and to specify the subject by its language only panders to a far from scholarly preoccupation with the undesirable connotations of nationalism.

Both the adjectives "Arabic" and "Islamic", however, and more importantly, must be regarded with suspicion since their only function seems to be to direct attention away from the variety within the philosophy and the serious compatibility between the subject matter of this philosophy and that of other "non-Islamic philosophies".

When we move on to consider the practitioners of the science, and whether their being Islamic or not is the reason for calling their philosophy "Islamic", it becomes even clearer that motives other than the purely scholarly are involved.

Now it is perfectly true that nearly all "Islamic" philosophers have been Moslems, and the exception are those earlier Christian and Jewish philosophers who, because of geographical and social factors, found themselves in a tradition which was almost entirely practised by Moslems. It is also unquestionably the case that practically all of these Moslem philosophers considered they were following the Islamic injunction to pursue knowledge, when they studied, taught and wrote about the science.

So much for history.