Islamic Science There s been some discussion previously of the need for an article on the History of Islamic Science At present there is a small section of that sort in the article on Islamic Science There s a real potential for tension there because two different groups are interested in the topic of Islamic Science and these two groups define it in very different ways I am concerned that the different assumptions of these two groups may lead to unnecessary conflict which can be avoided by dividing the present article in two The article Islamic science seems to have been founded by advocates of a modern intellectual movement called Islamic science which seeks to establish the practice of science within a particular set of traditional Islamic religious norms Thus the article defines Islamic science as science in the context of traditional religious ideas of Islam including its ethics and philosophy A Muslim engaged in this field is called a Muslim scientist This is not the same as science as conducted by Muslims in the secular context my emphasis Historians of science on the other hand find this definition excessively constraining since we investigate the ways in which scholars within the Islamic world developed scientific ideas through original research and by drawing on and transforming the ideas of their neighbors and predecessors It really doesn t matter to historians of science whether the particular scientist was Muslim e g al Khwarizmi Sabian e g Thabit ibn Qurra Christian e g Hunain ibn Ishaq or Jewish e g Hasdai ibn Shaprut whether he advocated strict adherence to Muslim traditions e g al Ghazzali or was critical of tradition and open to the ideas of foreign philosophers e g Averro s or whether he worked in a religious or secular context If he studied natural phenomena and worked within the Islamic world his work fits the historians broader definition of Islamic science These contradictory expectations are likely to lead to conflict in two or more different ways When historians wish to discuss scholars who don t follow traditional Islamic religious norms while advocates of the modern movement would wish to delete these from the discussion When advocates of the modern Islamic science movement wish to discuss those modern scholars who contribute to the development of that movement while historians would wish to delete them as not relevant to the historical development of science in Islamic cultures Rather than go this unhappy route I propose an amicable divorce removing the section on the History of Islamic Science perhaps renamed History of Science in Islam and making it a separate article under the History of Science portal and leaving the remaining article on Islamic Science as part of the series of articles on Islam