Having been thrust into the heart of creation as the vicegerent on earth by his Creator, Almighty Allah, it is natural that at the core of man's purpose is his thirst to know both his Creator and creation, as well as his relationships with them.

Man is created to know; it would not be an exaggeration to say that the other aspects of his life depend on and are determined by knowledge. Fair to the dynamics of life in general and to man's prospects in particular—which, after all, Allah conceived and created—Allah met such thirst with favorable terms and conditions.

He endowed man with the powers of senses and reason, further empowering and guiding them through His revealed knowledge, which He conveyed through a multitude of Prophets, the first being Adam and the last, the Seal of Prophets, Muhammad ﷺ.

Knowledge and truth exist in a symbiotic relationship

This way, by integrating and forming a harmonious balance between the provisos and outputs of the hierarchy of different sources of knowledge, man has positioned himself to receive and apply the truth revealed by his Creator effortlessly. Such is the case because knowledge and truth are twins, like two sides of the same coin.

Both come from Allah, with knowledge being at once the truth demonstrated and communicated, and truth being the ultimate goal and sanctum of knowledge.

The complementary relationship between senses, reason, and revelation constitutes the substance of Islamic epistemology. Such vitality and broadmindedness render a genuinely spiritual and knowledgeable person, who is a receptacle of knowledge and truth, the splendor of divine will and an existential archetype.

The Qur’an informs us that Adam, the first man and Prophet, was taught the names of all things (al-Baqarah 31) to help him live up to the implications of his understanding of truth and the challenges of his life purpose. According to the Qur’anic message, people are misguided and wrong primarily because they lack knowledge, and they are ignorant mainly because they have turned a deaf ear to the enlightening calls of truth.

Indeed, neither the senses nor reason, whether independently or in combination, is sufficient to adequately lead and enlighten humanity in the absence of revelation. The role of revelation is absolute and prescriptive; without it, both senses and reason become not only impaired but also unmoored, allowing them, in equal measure, to inspire and debilitate, to guide and misguide, and to illuminate and confuse.

However, to provide a fair perspective—emphasizing the importance of the entire hierarchy of knowledge sources and the harmonious relationship between its components—even revelation alone, without the contributions of the senses (empiricism) and reason (rationalism), while perfect, will remain imperfectly applied.

Much of its true potential will be left dormant, resulting in humanity missing out on its endless intrinsic advantages and leaving its civilizational evolution with an abundance of unanswered questions.

For example, while debating with his disbelieving father, who represented a flawed civilizational paradigm, Prophet Ibrahim told him that he had received knowledge that his father had not. And so, the wisest course of action for the father was to follow Ibrahim, who was the only one capable of guiding him and the rest of society to the right path (Maryam 43).

In the same vein, Christians have been accused of the gravest sin for attributing a son to Allah, which they did because neither they nor their forefathers had any understanding (knowledge) of the matter (al-Kahf 5). They simply failed to “read” and comprehend Prophet ‘Isa (Jesus) and his mother Mary as a Sign from Allah and to live their lives accordingly (al-Mu’minun 50).

It is no surprise, then, that the schemes of Satan against man, as his sworn enemy, are summarized in commands to commit evil and shameful deeds and to speak of Allah without knowledge (al-Baqarah 169).

From knowledge and truth to falsehood and ignorance

However, as people distorted the revelations of Allah throughout history and the revealed knowledge contained within them, they continued to cut themselves off from their connection to heaven. The separation led to the confinement of their existence, prospects, and hopes within the smallness of their autonomous selves and the tightness of life contexts.

Regardless of which was the cause and which was the effect, both falsehood and ignorance gradually began to seep into humanity's existential narratives, dominating all its endeavors undertaken under the guise of culture and civilizational progress.

The Prophets were desperate to halt the decline, reverse the situation, and restore the human race to its originally intended state of a blend of truth and knowledge. Prophet Nuh’s (Noah’s) elaborate calls to his rebellious people best exemplify this trend.

While his people were trapped in polytheism and ignorance about literally all aspects of life, material and immaterial, Nuh communicated some of the most refined thoughts and advanced truths, whose greatness become even more visible when compared to the foolish and irrational beliefs of his people. Nuh told his people, for example, that the only path to prosperity and salvation in both worlds was Allah’s path, if they only knew (Nuh 4).

He urged them to ask forgiveness from their Lord, who is always forgiving, promising that He would send abundant rain, increase their wealth and children, and provide them with gardens and rivers (Nuh 10-12). He reminded them that their Creator has created them in various stages (Nuh 14) and that Allah has created seven layered heavens, making the moon a reflected light and the sun a burning lamp (Nuh 15-16).

He also explained that Allah has caused them to grow from the earth in a progressive manner and will return them to it, extracting them once again (Nuh 17-18). Lastly, he noted that Allah has made the earth spacious for them to travel along wide roads (Nuh 19-20). 

As a result of their faithlessness and ignorance, the people of Nuh disobeyed and rejected their prophet. Instead, they followed someone else who appeared to have great wealth and many children, which led him to deceive himself and others, ultimately resulting in his – and other people’s - loss (Nuh 21).

If one carefully studies history, one can easily see that its trajectory has been a constant clash between truth and falsehood, and between knowledge and ignorance. The realms of falsehood and ignorance have prevailed most of the time, as people have generally been inclined to disobey and reject their prophets in favor of phony alternatives in the forms of self-worship, materialism (matter-worship), and idolatry rooted in selfishness, greed, megalomania, and a lust for power.

The role of Greek philosophy

It was during the classical period, or golden age, of Greek civilization that the increasingly restless human mind grew weary of both false religions and equally false systems of knowledge. Distrusting the strands of the previously stagnant human civilization, the greatest thinkers of the classical Greek era chose to approach religion and knowledge from a new perspective: philosophy, which involves the rational, abstract, and methodical examination of reality and human existence as well as experiences in relation to it.

For this reason, two of the five major branches of philosophy are metaphysics (the study of the first causes of things and the nature of being) and epistemology (the theory of knowledge, including its nature, origin, and limits).

Knowledge was still connected to normative truth, serving as a means to discover it, regardless of its nature or whereabouts, and then to celebrate it. It was not seen as an end in itself, confined to a limited worldview and used for the narrow goals that followed. By way of illustration, for Socrates, knowledge equated to virtue; to know the good is to do the good. He believed that knowledge was already within the soul, making learning akin to recollection.

Similarly, Plato defined knowledge as justified true belief, asserting that true knowledge must concern eternal, unchanging realities, not the ever-changing world of appearances. He also believed in innate knowledge, meaning the soul knows truth before birth. In contrast, Aristotle viewed knowledge as a combination of experience and reason, emphasizing empirical observation and logic. True knowledge, for him, is about understanding causes and essences built from the ground up. 

Although the Greek philosophers struggled with both epistemology and metaphysics— at last failing from the Islamic point of view—they deserve credit for their genuine efforts and for demonstrating, once again through the lens of philosophy, the close relationship between truth and knowledge.

It was these efforts and associated energy, along with qualified accomplishments, that inspired many Muslim philosophers to engage with Greek philosophy. Some limited themselves to the genuine contributions, while others exceeded the boundaries of what was Islamically appropriate and acceptable, generating in the process the subsequently renowned antipathy towards Greek philosophy and philosophy in general.

There was another significant contribution of the Greeks that resonated through the ages: their emphasis on knowledge over truth. This was understandable, as knowledge takes precedence over truth when both are elusive, due to its immediacy and perceptible presence in the mind as well as the real world.

Conversely, truth is more conceptual, abstract, and rather distant from immediate mental capacity and other qualities of humanity. For this reason, knowledge is generally seen as a means or a path that inevitably leads to truth. It signifies a precursor to its unveiling.

The latter contribution of the Greeks was notably embraced by Cicero, a prominent Roman philosopher who was greatly influenced by Greek philosophy. He translated the Greek word “episteme” to the Latin term “scientia.” For him, “scientia” represented systematic and true knowledge that leads to specific and noble objectives. Cicero was the first to use the word “scientia” for knowledge, paving the way for the later development of the modern concept of “science.”

Before its contemporary meaning and usage, the word “scientia” was used by several medieval scholars and philosophers with similar connotations to those of the Greek philosophers and Cicero. One of them was Thomas Aquinas, who used “scientia” to mean structured, rational knowledge, whether of nature or divine matters. He believed that faith and reason were harmonious and together could produce “scientia,” though from different sources.

Islam and science

After the advent of Islam as the only truth and the revelation that confirms earlier prophets and their messages, it did not have problems embracing existing notions of knowledge as encompassed within the concept of “scientia,” after appropriately adapting them to Islam. This was due to the universal nature of the Islamic understanding of knowledge and “scientia.”

One of the main goals of Islam is to revive the true complexion of truth and knowledge and to restore the strong connection between them. This relationship has existed since the beginning of humanity but has often been obscured by distorted ideas of truth and misguided notions of knowledge all the way through.

That the inseparable identity of Islam and everything described as “Islamic” is tawhid (the Oneness of Almighty Allah), set against the backdrop of countless forms of polytheism and idolatry, including self-worship and materialism; that the entire mission of Islam and its revolutionary effort to build civilization began with the divine command “iqra’” (“read”); and that the most notable aspect of Islam is that it is the religion of knowledge, the pursuit of which is an individual duty – this sums it all up.

It goes without saying that Islam’s religious and civilizational roles were not only groundbreaking and innovative but also remedial and reformative. Prompted by this philosophy, some ended up calling the Islamic theory of knowledge “tawhidic epistemology.”

In Islam, therefore, knowledge encompasses all aspects of life and includes at once physical and metaphysical dimensions. Sciences act as systematic disciplines that discover, build, and organize knowledge within their specific areas. The separation between sciences is merely a practical tool to enhance functionality, rather than a philosophical divide meant to create real differences or, worse, outright conflicts.

Additionally, the sciences of religion, which relate to salvation, are considered more essential than those focused on worldly matters, which provide only temporary benefits to certain groups of people.

Some leading figures of Islamic classical scholarship, such as Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina, al-Farabi, and Ibn Khaldun, consistently addressed the matter, demonstrating the organic unity of Islamic epistemology and its sciences. The emphasis is firmly placed on religious sciences and their knowledge, which are essential for salvation.

Therefore, they are obligatory for every Muslim to learn the basics. This knowledge denotes a foundation from which a person is free to study other, less essential sciences to earn a living and serve society.

These other sciences are sometimes referred to as rational, worldly, or practical sciences. Whatever the case may be, they are all Islamic sciences due to the Islamic spirit permeating intentions, purpose, objectives, and the nature of execution as well as application. As al-Ghazali encapsulated, true knowledge must lead to action and God-consciousness, and as al-Farabi stated, the final goal of knowledge is to guide the soul towards intellectual and moral perfection.

Needless to say, the union between Islamic universal truth and knowledge was the soul of Islamic civilization, which, although it has declined many times, which is natural, has never fallen. It has inscribed the most extensive and brightest chapters in human history, continually exciting, inspiring, and giving in multiple ways and degrees.

Science in modern times dominated by the Western worldview

After the rise of Christianity, which is a form of falsehood and a significant distortion of the Islam revealed to Prophet ‘Isa (Jesus), it became a dominant force that shaped the socio-political, cultural, and intellectual landscapes of the West for about a thousand years.

Most of this period is often referred to as the Dark Ages, contributing to a sense of religiophobia among Westerners. During this time, the vibrant spirit of knowledge, first known as "episteme" and later as "scientia", gradually faded, leaving only faint traces behind.

However, as the oppressive power of the Church began to decline, a new wave of thinkers with liberal and creative intellectual dispositions arose in the West. The shift led to the Renaissance (Rebirth) and the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason.

The goal, as implied by the terminology, was to move beyond the negative impacts of the Dark Ages and directly connect with the legacies of Greco-Roman civilization, emphasizing the power of reason over the glorification of religion and its failed dogmas.

The heritage of the Dark Ages regarding truth and knowledge was unflattering. It contributed little that was sustainable in the long run, and when the opportunity arose in the post-Dark Ages era, it was not to be missed or wasted.

Thus, the search for new truths and a framework for a new way of knowing received significant attention. Empiricism, which holds that all knowledge is based on experience from the senses, became the leading theory that molded the future of Western modern science from the 17 th century onward.

However, the problem with empiricism is that it is anti-religion and dismisses the spiritual dimension of existence, making it an anti-spiritual source of knowledge. At best, it marginalizes religion and spirituality; at worst, it negates them entirely.

This stems from its main principle that all knowledge must come from sensory experience. Since religious and spiritual truths, such as God, the soul, angels, jinn, and the afterlife, cannot be observed through the five senses, they are regarded as unknowable, meaningless, unscientific, useless, and simply non-existent.

Furthermore, revelations, intuition, and inner experiences, which are essential for spiritual knowledge, are not recognized as valid sources of truth. Moral and metaphysical concepts like divine purpose, sacred reality, and destiny are seen as subjective and speculative through an empirical lens, and hence deemed irrelevant and rejected.

Similar but not identical to empiricism is positivism, which values observable, testable, and empirical data above all else. It relies exclusively on sensory experience as the sole source of knowledge and rejects metaphysical or speculative claims that cannot be observed, tested, or measured. One could argue that positivism is a stricter, more scientific version of empiricism.

Consequently, all positivists are empiricists, but not all empiricists are positivists. Perhaps after the union of empiricism and positivism, rationalism is the second most widespread and popular scientific branch. On balance, it is also quite antireligious and antispiritual because it asserts that truth must be based on reason and logical deduction.

Reason is the standard, rather than anything otherworldly or transcendent. Some rationalists are less hostile towards religion than others, but even they tend to interpret religion in highly philosophical or pantheistic ways, challenging traditional beliefs and practices.

Strict rationalists are even more dismissive, rejecting miracles, revelation, the idea of prophethood, destiny, Judgment Day, and all faith-based doctrines if they are deemed irrational or illogical based on personal preferences and subjective judgments.

The fallibility of science

Regardless of whether senses come first, as in empiricism and positivism, or intellect comes first, as in rationalism, all these major branches of science remain limited to the human experience and the natural world. Neither has been able to rise to a higher level of reality, which would allow for a broader perspective on life and the optimization of human potential and experiences.

Reducing existence to mere matter, understood and judged individually and subjectively, leads to trivial outcomes. Indeed, it is humans who should direct and manage science, not the other way around. Similarly, humans should determine the future and destiny of science, not the reverse. Science is expected to enlighten and empower, not bewilder and dishonor.

Nobody denies the accuracy and validity of some of the epistemological outputs of empiricism, positivism, and rationalism. However, there is much more to know and appreciate, and human existence must align with this knowledge.

Unfortunately, the means, methods, and approaches that science offers are insufficient to elevate humanity beyond the basic physical aspects of life. In fact, the true nature and extent of life surpass what we can sense or logically deduce. Since it fails to recognize this, along with the importance of the physical parameters in which humans perform as a launching pad for further “adventures,” science becomes a hindrance rather than a help, and a disincentive rather than a motivation.

Science-wise, there is much to be desired on mankind’s journey towards self-actualization. Science’s rigidity in rejecting the possibility of other dimensions of life that can be identified and experienced through different means and methods is upsetting. Such an attitude threatens not only the future of humanity but also humanity itself.

Elevating science to the status of scientism is a step in the wrong direction and highlights the limitations of science in determining the definitive meaning of life and humanity's raison d’etre. 

Humanity must be prioritized over scientific endeavors. Our aim should be to uncover truth, leveraging science and its branches to achieve collective human goals and find contentment. Truth comes from above; hence, the believers path to upliftment and growth, with truth as their guide, is a spiritual journey to retrace the path of truth towards the Creator and Master, who is not bound by matter or perceptions.

The believers path leads to what is revealed and known, following well-trodden pathways. In contrast, when left to its own devices, science seeks truth from the ground up, but towards the unknown, unpredictable, and uncharted.

While science's approach is admirable in some ways, it is destined to fail from the outset because, ontologically speaking, it has so little at its disposal that it cannot even begin its challenging and lengthy journey, let alone reach some significant heights. 

Islam and contemporary Western science are at odds 

Metaphysical truth is not compatible with science, which is anchored in physics as the supreme reality and views spiritual certainty as a fantasy that is neither known nor attainable. The realms of science and faith are increasingly drifting apart. As science advances, there is less room for religion. Very little of their origins, characteristics, scopes, and goals overlap, leaving little common ground.

As a result, the current state of science is highly problematic; it takes on more than it can handle, stretching itself too thin and fighting a losing battle against imaginary foes. In the frantic pursuit of truth and human salvation, science often chases futile goals and lacks a clear strategy. Desperate for results, it swings between extremes.

It does not hesitate to exceed the limits of decency and morality, committing previously unthinkable natural and rational blasphemies to disguise its shortcomings and dangerously dwindling reserves of optimism and hope.

It is because of all this that, for Muslims, engaging with science on Western terms is a double-edged sword. Completely abandoning it is impossible due to its commanding presence and the many benefits it offers for humanity and civilization.

However, fully embracing it without reservation is very dangerous, as modern and postmodern Western science often contradicts the values that Muslims hold dear. It is justifiable to express that relying on science dominated by the modern West, in its scientism sense, can undermine one's Islamic faith. Muslims must be equipped to challenge and see through the misleading marketing tactics of science and its community of scientists.

Therefore, it is essential for all Muslims to engage thoughtfully with science today, taking advantage of its positive aspects while avoiding its negative ones. The latter should be replaced with more suitable alternatives that align with Islamic principles.

Some may refer to this as the Islamization of knowledge and its sciences, while others may call it integration and harmonization. Regardless, one thing is clear: science in the Muslim world must be redefined, reconceived, reoriented, remodeled, and recalibrated to serve Islamic truth and the interests of its people, becoming one of the key assets.

Fueled by the limitless power of faith, it should enable individuals to continually strive for both earthly self-actualization and heavenly ecstasy.