It was considered a type of intellectual sin to separate...

It was considered a type of intellectual sin to separate knowledge into compartments, although each branch of knowledge had its own methodology which was strictly adhered to. That is, the methodology for the study of logic was not the same as that of grammar, and you would not mix the two together. Or if you were studying chemistry, you could not apply methods of the study of Sufism to it, and vice versa.

But the methods themselves were rooted in a worldview and hierarchy of knowing that related them together. The universal figures we have in Islamic civilization, people such as al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, and Omar Khayyām, were all polymaths.

These people were not only many-sided geniuses; they were also totally integrated personalities who had a wholesome view of knowledge-all based on tawḥīd , Unity, which implies not only tawḥīd of the Divine Being, but also the tawḥīd of His creation, existentially, that is the relation of creatures to each other, as well as tawḥīd of knowledge.

I have alluded to this matter in my Knowledge and the Sacred [SUNY Press, 1989], which is a heavy metaphysical book meant for those who have studied such matters for some time.

So, on the one hand, all of the different intellectual rational and transmitted disciplines in Islamic civilization are to be designated by the term “ Islamic sciences ”, whether they are Qurʾānic commentary, grammar, or logic; and on the other hand, one has to differentiate the term from “Islamic science”, which usually refers specifically to the natural and mathematical sciences. In my own writings, depending on the context, I have used both terms, plural and singular.

When I write “Islamic science”, let us say in my book Science and Civilization in Islam [Harvard University Press, 1968], I mean the natural and mathematical sciences, not the religious or linguistic and literary sciences. However, sometimes, when we talk about Islamic education, I have written “ Islamic sciences ” in the sense of organized knowledge.

Science ultimately means organized knowledge, and “ Islamic sciences ” are those branches of knowledge that have been cultivated in Islamic civilization according to the principles of Islamic revelation. At least that is my (and other traditional scholars’) understanding of it.