There are indeed strong grounds, as demonstrated in a number of serious studies undertaken by Toshihiko Izutsu and Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, for us to consider the islamized Arabic-that is, the Arabic language after the revelation of the Qur’an and as used in the Islamic religious, intellectual and scientific tradition-to be a linguistic-conceptual system that eloquently projects a particular worldview, a particular way of understanding Truth-Reality.
To briefly illustrate this point, let us consider the word ‘ilm (Malay: ilmu), the most commonly used term in Arabic referring to knowledge, which is in fact part of the basic Islamic vocabulary of the Muslims worldwide.
This term stems from a root comprising three letters, ‘-l-m, or ‘alam. The basic meaning inherent in that root word is that of ‘alaamah (Malay: alamat), meaning “way sign.”
Al-Raghib al-Isfahani, a well-known authority of the Arabic language of the 5th century Hijrah, in one of his works commenting on some important terms appearing in the Qur’an, explains that the term ‘alam reflects “a trace (or a mark) by which something is known.”
The relation between knowledge (‘ilm) and way sign (‘alam) is particularly telling given the Arabian context in which the Qur’an was revealed.
Franz Rosenthal, for instance, notes in page 10 of his Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970) that “the connection between ‘way sign’ and ‘knowledge’ is particularly close and takes on especial significance in the Arabian environment.”
“For the Bedouin,” he further observes, “the knowledge of way signs, the characteristic marks in the desert which guided him on his travels and in the execution of his daily tasks, was the most important and immediate knowledge to be acquired.”
“In fact,” he continues, “it was the kind of knowledge on which his life and well-being principally depended. Thus, it is easy to see how in a largely nomadic environment, the general concept of knowledge was able to develop from the concrete process of being acquainted with ‘way signs.'”
In addition, ‘-l-m is also the root for another widely used term, ‘aalam (Malay: alam), which generally means the World of Nature-the universe, or the cosmos-and which covers not only all that is around us, but also whatever is in us, which can be studied and known.
It has in fact been an established position in the Islamic intellectual and scientific tradition that there are two interrelated kinds-or better still, modes-of the world: the macrocosm (al-‘alam al-kabir) and the microcosm (al-‘alam al-saghir); the former referring to the universe, while the latter pointing specifically to man as a being modelled on the former.
In that tradition as well, based upon the intellectual framework projected by the Qur’an and the Prophetic Traditions, all the individual things and events in the universe are considered to be God’s ayats, viz. God’s signs and symbols.
An ayah basically means “a manifest sign” which serves to indicate what is hidden, or not directly manifest.
Since al-‘alam was a term originally used for anything instrumental and indicative in the obtainment of the knowledge of something, these signs or ayats taken as a totality are referred to in the Islamic intellectual and scientific tradition as al-‘alam (the Cosmos; the Universe; the World of Nature), theologically defined as “everything other than God which points to Him.”
It is also important for us to be aware that not only are all the individual entities and events which comprise the World of Nature considered by the Qur’an to be the ayats of Allah but the verses in the Qur’an themselves are so called.
As such, it is not at all surprising-in fact, it is perfectly logical-that many a scholar in the Islamic intellectual and scientific tradition draws an analogy between the two, regarding the cosmos as a book in more or less the same manner as the Qur’an, the main difference between them being that the former is created whereas the latter, Revealed.
Furthermore, since the Author, as it were, of the former book is both One and Unique in the absolute sense, one can rightly infer therefore that the book as a totality also reflects such a unity-being a unified system of signs and meanings-just like the latter book with its unity of message and teachings.
Subscribing to the above understanding will also lead one to treat natural sciences as serious attempts to read the Open Book of Nature correctly. And as the Author of the two books is one and the same, one cannot then but also be attentive to the teachings of the Revealed Book in one’s very act of doing science.
All these are among those features that are constitutive of what the Muslims generally call the tawhid (integrated) approach to all the different and valid branches of knowledge. Sciences developed by Muslims must therefore reflect such features for them to be properly regarded as Islamic.