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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Contemporary Topics of Islamic Thought Empiricism And The Philosophy Of Islam One of the most important topics of debate among Muslim intellectuals and scholars today is about the scope of Islam. All Muslims affirm that Islam is a complete way of life, and God Himself has revealed in the Qur'an: “On this day I have perfected for you your religion and I have completed my blessing for you, and I have chosen for you al-Islam as a religion…” (5:3).

But does this mean that Islam contains orders pertaining to all the arts and sciences, for example, regarding how to conduct research in mechanical engineering and economics, or must Islam confine itself to prescriptions for how to perform prayers, write a will, etc., with the understanding that these matters of ritual observance are sufficient for an entire life?

Not only the learned, but the masses of Muslims are also concerned with this sort of question, for the ordinary Muslim wants to know how to submit to the will of Allah in all the aspects of his life.

We expect our religious scholars to tell us whether Islam forbids contraception, the recreational use of drugs, lotteries, and a host of other items about which there is controversy, and the scholars of Islam answer our questions by formulating rulings based on the Qur'an and authoritative narrations, but there are also broader questions about the scope of Islamic thought: Is there any such thing as Islamic economics? What about Islamic sociology, astrophysics, microbiology?

Within the intellectual history of the Muslims, there have been traditions of study of various fields such as mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, and often these traditions are called Islamic mathematics, Islamic astronomy, and Islamic philosophy, respectively. The question then arises as to whether these traditions have a normative or prescriptive value.

It is fairly clear that it would be a mistake to think that Islam contains rules for how to think about the stars and planets and that these rules are systematized in Islamic astronomy, but when we turn from astronomy to philosophy, the situation becomes a bit more confusing because Islamic philosophy has been developed at least in part as an attempt to provide a religiously satisfactory approach to the problems of philosophy.