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Iqbal lets the European historian Robert Briffault testify at length that modern science 'owes its existence' to Arab culture, not merely specific discoveries. He then pushes the anti-classical thesis to its strongest formulation: the empirical method arose from 'prolonged intellectual warfare' with Greek thought, not compromise, and Greek influence actually delayed the emergence of the Qur'anic empirical spirit by at least two centuries.
Section 5 surveyed the Muslim revolt against Greek logic — from al-Naẓẓām's principle of doubt through the systematic refutations of Suhrawardī and Ibn Taimiyyah to the practical experimental achievements of al-Bīrūnī, al-Kindī, and Ibn al-Haytham — and claimed that Europe has been 'rather slow to recognize the Islamic origin of her scientific method.' Section 6 now provides the European witness Iqbal has promised: four extended passages from Robert Briffault's The Making of Humanity (1919), each advancing a specific claim about the Islamic origin of modern science, followed by Iqbal's own summary statement in which he delivers the strongest formulation of the anti-classical thesis.
The section is unusual in the Reconstruction in being composed primarily of quotation. Iqbal lets Briffault speak at length — a strategic rhetorical choice. By presenting the argument for Islamic scientific priority in the words of a European historian rather than in his own voice, Iqbal preempts the objection that his claims are motivated by civilisational partisanship. Briffault's credentials matter: he is a European writing for a European audience, and his conclusions are the result of his own historical research, not of Muslim apologetics.
Briffault's four passages make claims of ascending audacity. First, Roger Bacon was 'no more than one of the apostles of Muslim science and method to Christian Europe,' and the attribution of the experimental method to him (or to Francis Bacon) is 'part of the colossal misrepresentation of the origins of European civilization.' Second, science was 'the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world,' but its influence was mediated through many channels, not all of them directly scientific. Third, 'there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic culture is not traceable,' and this influence is clearest in the 'genesis of natural science and the scientific spirit.' Fourth, and most radically: 'science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence.' The ancient world was 'pre-scientific'; the Greeks 'systematized, generalized, and theorized' but lacked 'the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute methods of science'; and these methods 'were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.'
Iqbal then delivers his own summary, which goes beyond Briffault in one crucial respect. Briffault attributes the scientific method to 'Arab culture' without specifying its philosophical source. Iqbal insists that the source is the Qur'an — specifically, the Qur'anic appeal to the concrete — and that the experimental method arose 'not to a compromise with Greek thought but to a prolonged intellectual warfare with it.' Greek influence, far from stimulating Muslim science, 'obscured the Muslims' vision of the Qur'an' and delayed the emergence of the empirical spirit by 'at least two centuries.' This is the anti-classical thesis in its most uncompromising form.