In Islam, knowledge is a unity; there is no difference between religious knowledge and worldly knowledge. This division is in fact an offshoot of the age of decline of the Muslims. In their golden age, Muslims led the foundation of modern science, established universities, laboratories for experiments and astronomical observatories, and founded state-of-the-art research institutes. The most important thing in this regard was that these institutions and universities have both government and religious support and patronage. In the Islamic era, there were no separate streams of religious schools and modern schools, as they are today. At least in the early twelve centuries of Islamic history, no such distinction of knowledge existed at all.

It was not only the misfortune of the Muslims but also a tragedy of humanity that when science got Western patronage, they separated science from religion and concealed it under the guise of atheism and disbelief. Many historical reasons could attribute for this misfortune, the most important of which is that Christianity did not have the concept of the comprehensiveness of religion and science that Islam believes in. It resulted in the beginning of an era of bitter conflict between church and science that lasted for centuries and ended with a complete segregation of religion and science.
The scientific literature that was prepared in the West in the last two centuries was dominated by atheism, disbelief, bigotry and materialism. When this literature reached the East, our religious circles considered it safe to at least protect religion and faith, so they set up religious seminaries for the protection and dissemination of pure religious education, while the other class turned their attention toward schools, colleges and universities.

One of the basic aims of the Furqania Academy was to eliminate this duality of knowledge. The scope of the Academy’s efforts in this regard spans half a century. Therefore, the academy came up with various proposals to eliminate the duality of knowledge, the most important of which was to include modern sciences (especially English, science and mathematics) in Islamic seminaries. It also included the launch of part-time Islamic courses in order to bring college and university students closer to Islam. An attempt was made to put the proposals of the Academy into practice in various educational institutions of the country on a limited scale. However, since this idea had not gained public acceptance in the ummah, its outcome was also limited.

A welcome development in this regard is the recent announcement made by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind in which the Jamiat has announced that the students of Islamic seminaries will be allowed to take the Class X examination under Open Schooling. According to Jamiat, in the next five years, a total of about 50,000 students of madrassas will be provided opportunity to clear the 10th class examination.

Of course, this is an important and historic step. It is even more important because it has been announced by an organization that has long been labeled as traditionalist, conservative, and hostile to English and modern science. The decisions of this organization are valued by a large class of Islamic scholars and a large population of Muslims. Therefore, this decision of Jamiat Ulema will surely affect a large section of the Muslims in India and, insha’Allah, its fruitful results will soon come to light, and other institutions and Islamic seminaries will also follow the suit.

But one thing must be kept in mind in this regard and that is this one step alone is not enough to eliminate the duality of knowledge. There is still a lot to be done in this regard. Of course, this is the first step in the right direction. In particular, Islamic seminaries should think in terms of opening special departments for teaching the theoretical aspects of modern sciences (philosophy) and ilmul kalam (theology)) in madrassas after teaching aalimiyah/ tenth grade, where scientific marvels of Qur’an and Hadith and ilmul kalam must be taught as post-graduation (specialization). On the other hand, new courses should be started in these seminaries to bring college and university students closer to Islamic theology. Inshallah, this will be discussed in detail later.