The wider French usage has been gradually percolating into...

The wider French usage has been gradually percolating into English and now we can also speak of “ human sciences ” in English-the equivalent of the French les sciences humaines -as referring to those branches of knowledge that deal with the human person. Philosophically, the broadest definition of science is organized knowledge.

Iqbal: And this is how the term ʿilm has been traditionally understood, so that when we say ʿ ulūm al-Qurʾān , we mean the systematic and organized field of study of the Qurʾān-the entire field dealing with all branches of knowledge about the Qurʾān, whether tafsīr (commentary), lugha (language), balāgha (rhetoric), or any other science. Likewise for terms such as ʿ ulūm al-Ḥadīth and ʿulūm al-fiqh .

Nasr: Yes, indeed, as I have written in various books, in Islam, all branches of knowledge are interconnected and none is divorced from religion; they are organized as are roots ( uṣūl ) and branches ( furūʿ ). Thus, in traditional Islamic civilization, even if you studied a book of medicine, like the Qānūn of Ibn Sīnā, the book starts by mentioning the Name of God and goes on to the praise of the Prophet-upon him blessings and peace-before anything else.

That is, we try to relate the subject under study to the Creator, to God Himself. The same is true for mathematics, astronomy, and so on. Muslim scholars of the past, who were some of the greatest scientists in human history, considered the root of what they were studying to be the Divine Reality. This truth and the consequent interrelation of the branches of the tree of knowledge are something that we have now forgotten.

And therefore the sclerosis that has taken place in the modern scientific world has reduced the human mind to something like a set of drawers: in one drawer you put socks, another is for shirts, but there is no necessary relationship of one to the other. Like students in our modern institutions, who may take a course on biology from 9 to 10, the next hour a course on the history of South America, the next hour a linguistics class…but there is no intellectual relationship of these with each other.

It is all segmented. When students are sitting in a class and discussing Shakespeare, it has nothing to do with the math class that they are going to take the next hour. This segmentation in the lack of common principles is what characterizes modern education. Islamic education was exactly the opposite of this.