While there is great merit in studying the technical intellectual disciplines of the Islamic sciences in atomistic fashion and in isolation from one another, much is lost in this kind of an approach. For one thing, the nomenclature of each discipline, such as a legal theory or rational theology, is distinct and discipline-specific. By exclusively focusing on the particulars of each discipline, we are prone to lose sight of the significant overlap between these specialized fields on the one hand, and their shared concerns and relatively common goals on the other.

What is common to every intellectual perspective in Islamic thought, be it logic, mysticism, philosophy, theology, or legal theory, is their representatives’ insistence on the efficacy of language and rationality as the basis for their inquiry. Some mystical writers, for example, attempted to argue against the limits of language and our normal thought structures in attaining knowledge of ultimate realities. But they did this on logical grounds. The philosophers, on the other hand, built entire intellectual edifices off of their reliance on the unmediated intellect’s ability to know. And, while many scholars of rational theology argued for the need to interpret scripture metaphorically when scripture seemed to contradict reason, some legal theorists insisted that the literal reading of scripture itself was the avenue by which a plurality of intentions on the part of the divine author could be ascertained. This workshop will, therefore, highlight the various interdisciplinary avenues through which rationality and language have interacted with one another in Islamic thought.