"Remember that we are a people neither accustomed nor permitted to lose hope and confidence, so that it is not possible for us simply to do nothing but wrangle among ourselves and rave about empty slogans and negative activism while letting the real challenge of the age engulf us without positive resistance. The real challenge is intellectual in nature, and the positive resistance must be mounted from the fortification not merely of political power, but of power that is founded upon right knowledge.
We are now again at the crossroads of history, and awareness of Islamic identity is beginning to dawn in the consciousness of emergent Muslims. Only when this awareness comes to full awakening with the sun of knowledge will there emerge from among us men and women of spiritual and intellectual maturity and integrity who will be able to play their role with wisdom and justice in upholding the truth.Such men and women will know that they must return to the early masters of the religious and intellectual tradition of Islam, which was established upon the sacred foundation of the Holy Quran and the Tradition of the Holy Prophet, in order to learn from the past and be able to acquip spiritually and intellectually for the future; they will realize that they must not simply appropriate and imitate what modern secular Western civilization has created, but must regain by exerting their own creative knowledge, will, and imagination what is lost of the Muslims' purpose in life, their history their values and virtues embodied in their sciences, for what is loss can never be regained by blind imitation and the raving slogans which deafen with the din of 'development'; they will discern that development must not involve a correspondence of Islam with the facts of contemporary events that have strayed far from the path of truth; and they will conceive and formulate their own definitions and conceptions of government and of the nature of development that will correspond with the purpose of Islam.Their emergence is conditional not merely upon physical struggle, but more upon the achievement of true knowledge, confidence and boldness of vision that is able to create great changes in history."
Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas
Kuala Lumpur
27 Muharram 1414 / 17 July 1993
(Taken from "Islam and Secularism", 1993)
