Was Islam as rigid and narrow as it appears today? Was it really open to the influence of other cultures and intellectual traditions, particularly outside Islam? Was the pursuit of knowledge, science in particular, merely limited to Quran and hadith for its sources? I raise these questions in the context of scholarship, which is attempting to articulate for "Islamic science" as a binary to modern science. I do this by reflecting on the early Islamic eclecticism where scientific enterprise was a collective project, involving Nestorian Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and others, under the inspired leadership of Muslim caliphs and intellectual leaders. There is an ongoing essentialization of science within a section of scholarship in history of science, which need to be discussed and debated