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Islamic philosophy

Wikipedia's first sentence called it “attempt to fuse the fields of philosophy with the religious teachings of islam”. Today it says “philosophy that emerges from the islamic tradition”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
We saved snapshots of this article over twenty years; you are reading the 2005 one. Red dashes: removed from Wikipedia since. Pale dots: rewritten; the numbered note shows what it says now. 1 tap a number or a side note to jump between them
The opening as it read in 2005

Islamic philosophy is the attempt to fuse the fields of philosophy with the religious teachings of Islam . As with any fusion of religion and philosophy, the attempt is difficult because classical philosophers start with no preconditions for which conclusions they must reach in their investigation, while classical religious believers have a set of religious principles of faith that they hold one must believe. Indeed, due to these divergent goals and views, some hold that one cannot simultaneously be a philosopher and a true adherent of Islam , which is believed to be a revealed religion by its adherents. In this view, all attempts at synthesis ultimately must fail. Others, however, hold that a synthesis between Islam and philosophy is possible. One way to find a synthesis is to use philosophical arguments to prove that one's preset religious principles are true. This is a common technique found in the writings of many religious traditions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but this is not generally accepted as true philosophy by philosophers. Another way to find a synthesis is to abstain from holding as true any religious principles of one's faith at all, unless one independently comes to those conclusions from a philosophical analysis. However, this is not generally accepted as being faithful to one's religion by adherents of that religion. A third, rarer and more difficult path is to apply analytical philosophy to one's own religion. In this case a religious person would also be a philosopher, by asking questions such as: What is the nature of God ? How do we know that God exists? What is the nature of revelation ? How do we know that God reveals his will to mankind? Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted literally? Which of our religious traditions must be interpreted allegorically? What must one actually believe to be considered a true adherent of our religion? How can one reconcile the findings of philosophy with religion? How can one reconcile the findings of science with religion? This is the task of Islamic philosophy.1

This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 16052957.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “attempt to fuse the fields of philosophy with the religious teachings of islam”. Today it says “philosophy that emerges from the islamic tradition”. Read the current article and compare.
2005201020152020Oct '232025
Counts in the opening at each snapshot. Green: the word gained ground. Red: it was cut. Grey: no change.

What Wikipedia says this is

Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2005, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.

Then

attempt to fuse the fields of philosophy with the religious teachings of islam

Now

philosophy that emerges from the islamic tradition

Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.

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