The Concept of Religion in Islam

By Prof. Dr. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

The concept couched in the term din, which is generally understood to mean religion, is not the same as the concept religion as interpreted and understood throughout Western religious history. When we speak of Islam and refer to it in English as a ‘religion’, we mean and understand by it the din¹, in which all the basic connotations inherent in the term din are conceived as gathered into a single unity of coherent meaning as reflected in the Holy Qur’an and in the Arabic language to which it belongs.

The Neo-Ghazalian, Attasian Perspective

"The Neo-Ghazalian, Attasian project in the late twentieth-century, however long the Muslim world might have taken in producing it, represents a blueprint for a philosophical dimension of not only tahafut - deconstruction, but also tajdid - renaissance. This renaissance does not surrender to 'modernity' or reject it utterly; but understands it, confirms its positive aspects and rejects its excesses - just as al-Ghazali did in his engagement with the philosophical foundations of Avicennian/ Aristotelian worldview. With that paradigm well and truly established, change in the Muslim world need not be negotiated by means of Western notions of modernity - but in a way that ultimately transcends them. For this, the ummah should be grateful to Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas." - M. Afifi al-Akiti and H.A HellyerThe Negotiation of Modernity Through Tradition In Contemporary Muslim Intellectual Discourse: The Neo-Ghazalian, Attasian PerspectiveSource: Himpunan Keilmuan Muslim (HAKIM)

Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam

This is a very important book. No book of its kind, in profundity as well as magnitude of scope and comprehensive grasp of modern intellectual challenges facing the contemporary Muslim World, appeared in the last century. The book deals with the fundamental question of the nature of ‘worldview’ according to Islam—a question that has never really been raised in our time. The author proposes that the nature of the worldview of Islam is not merely the mind’s view of the physical world and of man’s historical, social, political and cultural involvement in it, as has been misunderstood in the minds of secular, contemporary Muslim scholars generally, and particularly those preoccupied with the social and political sciences, but it should bear upon the Muslims’ ideas about ‘change’, ‘development’, and ‘progress’.

The fundamental elements of the worldview of Islam, together with the key terms and concepts that they unfold, are elaborated in detail in this book.
Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam, Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

IRCICA Award for Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Ircica Award for:
Prof. Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas
Professor Dr. Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

The International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) is really privileged and takes great pleasure in announcing that Y.M. Professor Dr. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Founder-Director of ISTAC and the Holder of the al-Ghazali Chair of Islamic Thought, has been honored by the Islamic World as a distinguished scholar who will receive the IRCICA Award for excellent contributions to various fields of Islamic Civilization.

The Educational Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Ed. John L. Esposito, Reviewed by Maryam Jameelah

[Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, The Educational Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib Al‑Attas, ISTAC, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia]

"The currency of modern educational ideas in the Islamic lands is a historical testimony to the epical failure of the Muslims over the past two hundred years, and practices are the slow, but inexorable, unravelling of the Muslim mind. Education in the contemporary world is like the most pervasive ‘conveyor belt’ transmitting the ideas of the dominant culture and the values system of politico‑economic elite to the credulous and dominated generations. Education in the true Foucaldian sense is plugged into the grid of reigning ideas and values, not necessarily predicated on ‘truth’. It is also a master technology of control, which leaves nothing untouched. The content of modern education and the whole process of schooling/disciplining are aimed at ‘manufacturing’ human beings to fulfil certain political and socio-economic objectives set by the political powers that be. The individual and the needs of his self are absent from the whole project of modern education.

Prof. Naquib al-Attas: The Concept of Education in Islam

The keynote address delivered by Prof. Naquib al-Attas at the "First World Conference on Muslim Education" in March 1977.
ISTAC

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas (born September 5, 1931) is a prominent contemporary Muslim philosopher and thinker from Malaysia. He is one of the few contemporary scholars who is thoroughly rooted in the traditional Islamic sciences and who is equally competent in theology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, and literature. He is considered to be the pioneer in proposing the idea of Islamization of Knowledge. Al-Attas' philosophy and methodology of education have one goal: Islamization of the mind, body and soul and its effects on the personal and collective life on Muslims as well as others, including the spiritual and physical non-human environment.

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas: An Introduction by Claude Alvares

Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas is one of the towering intellectual giants of our era, one who has written consistently, wisely, uncompromisingly and well on the Islamic understanding of knowledge. That is why this particular chapter from his book, Islam and Secularism, has been selected for this Multiversity series. Not only does it lay out in succinct fashion the distinct and separate Western and Islamic approaches to knowledge, it also goes on to outline the overall scheme of knowledge acquisition that should inform education in Muslim societies – or Muslim institutions of learning in plural societies – in today’s world.

Prof. Al-Attas has remained one of the most impressive scholars of Islam and of the Islamization of contemporary knowledge. He was associated with the founding of several universities including the National University of Malaysia as well as the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC). His biography is impossible to summarize in a few words. A detailed account is available at Wikipedia.

Kisah langsung dari Prof. Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

Q: Boleh Prof. ceritakan sedikit bagaimana ISTAC ini dibina?

Islam and Secularism - Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

"This book was originally dedicated to the emergent Muslim, for whose hearing and understanding it was indeed meant, in the hope that they would intelligently prepared, when their times come, to weather with discernment the pestilential winds of secularization and with courage to create necessary changes in the realm of our thinking that is still floundering in the sea of bewilderment and self-doubt." - Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam & Secularim (1993)

Al-Attas - Islam and Secularism

Written more than twenty years ago, this book is one of the most creative and original works of a Muslim thinker in the contemporary Muslim world.