Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas > Quotes

“Today I meet with Dr. Syamsuddin Arif. He said Prof. al-Attas says, "I don't read much but I think a lot”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

“Ibarat manusia tanpa keperibadian, universiti moden tidak mempunyai pusat yang sangat penting dan tetap, tidak ada prinsip-prinsip utama yang tetap, yang menjelaskan tujuan akhirnya. Ia tetap menganggap dirinya memikirkan hal-hal universal dan bahkan menyatakan memiliki fakulti dan jurusan sebagaimana layaknya tubuh suatu organ - tetapi ia tidak memiliki otak, jangan akal (intellect) dan jiwa, kecuali oleh dalam suatu fungsi pengurusan murni untuk pemeliharaan dan perkembangan jasmani. Perkembangannya tidak dibimbing oleh suatu prinsip yang akhir dan tujuan yang jelas, kecuali oleh prinsip nisbi yang mendorong mengejar ilmu tanpa henti dan tujuan yang jelas.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Ciri-ciri kesan Islam pada sejarah sesuatu bangsa harus dicari bukan pada perkara-perkara atau sesuatu yang zahir mudah ternampak oleh mata kepala, akan tetapi lebih pada perkara-perkara yang terselip tersembunyi dari pandangan biasa, seperti pemikiran sesuatu bangsa yang biasa terkandung dalam bahasa.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam dalam Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Melayu

“Justice and injustice indeed begins and ends with the self.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“Definisi epistemologis yang paling tepat untuk ilmu, dengan Allah Subhanallahu wa Ta'ala sebagai sumbernya, ialah tibanya (husul) makna (ma'na) sesuatu benda atau objek ilmu ke dalam jiwa. Dengan memandang jiwa sebagai penafsir maka ilmu adalah tibanya (wusul) diri (jiwa) kepada makna sesuatu hal atau suatu objek ilmu.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“An Islamic university...structure is different from a Western University; [its] conception of what constitutes knowledge is different from what Western philosophers set forth as knowledge; [its] aims and aspirations are different from Western conceptions. The purpose of higher education is not, like in the West, to produce the complete citizen, but rather, as in Islam, to produce the complete man, or the universal man.... A Muslim scholar is a man who is not a specialist in any one branch of knowledge but is universal in his outlook and is authoritative in several branches of related knowledge.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

“It is like the thirsty traveller who at first sincerely sought the water of knowledge, but who later, having found it plain perhaps, proceeded to temper his cup with the salt of doubt so that his thirst now becomes insatiable though he drinks incessantly, and that in thus drinking the water that cannot slake his thirst, he has forgotten the original and true purpose for which the water was sought.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“To know how to put what knowledge in which place is wisdom (hikmah). Otherwise, knowledge without order and seeking it without discipline does lead to confusion and hence to injustice to one's self.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“Di sisi Islam maka ilmu, jikalau tidak bersabit dengan mengenal diri, mematuhi ajaran agama, menyempurnakan masharakat, membimbing negara, menyatakan hikmah, menegakkan keadilan, mengukuhkan akhlak dan budipekerti - hanyalah sia-sia belaka; di sisi Islam seseorang itu tiada dapat dikatakan berilmu, atau alim, jikalau tiada ia membayangkan dalam dirinya kesan ilmu itu pada seluruh segi kehidupannya sebagaimana dijelaskan di atas.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

“When the man, by means if 'ibadat, succeeded in curbing his animal and canal passions and has thereby rendered submissive his animal soul,making it subject to the rational soul, the man thus described has attained to freedom and existence;he has achieved supreme peace and his soul is pacified, being set at liberty, as it were, free from fetters of inexorable fate and the noisy strife and hell of human vices.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Konsep "manusia baik" dalam islam tidak hanya "baik" dalam pengertian sosial seperti difahami orang pada umumnya,tetapi ia juga mesti pertama baik terhadap dirinya,tidak berlaku zalim(tidak adil)terhadap dirinya.Sekiranya ia tidak dapat adil terhadap dirinya,bagaimana ia dapat benar-benar adil terhadap orang lain.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Man is like an island set in isolation in a fathomless sea enveloped by darkness, saying that the loneliness his self knows is so utterly absolute because even he knows not his self completely.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Sejarah telah mengajar bahawa semakin indah dan rumit gaya senirupa, maka semakin menandakan kemerosotan budi dan akal; Acropolis Yunani, Persepolis Iran, dan Piramid-piramid Mesir tiada menyorotkan sinaran budi dan akal. Dalam menilai peranan dan kesan Islam, ciri-ciri yang harus dicari oleh mereka bukan pada tugu dan candi, pada pahatan dan wayang - ciri-ciri yang mudah dipandang mata jasmani - akan tetapi pada bahasa dan tulisan yang sebenarnya mencarakan daya budi dan akal merangkum pemikiran.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam dalam Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Melayu

“Change, development and progress, according to the Islamic viewpoint, refer to the return to the genuine Islam enunciated and practised by the Holy Prophet (may God bless and give him Peace!) and his noble Companions and their Followers (blessing and peace be upon them all!) and the faith and practice of genuine Muslims after them; and they also refer to the self and mean its return to its original nature and religion (Islam).”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“Justice implies knowledge of the right and proper place for a thing or a being to be; of right as against wrong; of the mean and limit; of spiritual gain as against loss; of truth as against falsehood.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“But the philosophical and scientific process which I call 'secularization' necessarily involves the divesting of spiritual meaning from the world of nature; the desacralization of politics from human affairs; and the deconsecration of values from the human mind and conduct.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Islam is a religion based upon knowledge, and a denial of the possibility and objectivity of knowledge would involve the destruction of the fundamental basis upon which not only the religion, but all the sciences are rooted.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Oldest Known Malay Manuscript: A 16th Century Malay Translation of the 'Aqa'id of al-Nasafi

“Muslims must be warned that plagiarists and pretenders as well as ignorant imitators affect great mischief by debasing values, imposing upon the ignorant, and encouraging the rise of mediocrity. The appropriate original ideas for hasty implementation and make false claims for themselves. Original ideas cannot be implemented when vulgarized; on the contrary, what is praiseworthy in them will turn out to become blameworthy, and their rejection will follow with the dissatisfaction that will emerge. So in this way authentic and creative intellectual effort will continually be sabotaged. It is not surprising that the situation arising out of the loss of adab also provides the breeding ground for the emergence of extremists who make ignorance their capital.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“The secularizing 'values' and events that have been predicted would happen in the Muslim world have now begun to unfold with increasing momentum and persistence due still to the Muslims' lack of understanding of the true nature and implications of secularization as a philosophical program.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Seeing that he owns absolutely nothing to ‘repay’ his debt, ‘his own consciousness’ of the fact ‘that he is himself the very substance’ of debt, so must he ‘repay’ with himself, so must he ‘return’ himself to Him Who owns him absolutely.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“The common understanding among Muslims, no doubt indoctrinated by Western notions, is that a secular state is a state that is not governed by the 'ulama', or whose legal system is not established upon the revealed law. In other words it is not a theocratic state. But this setting in contrast the secular state with the theocratic state is not really an Islamic way of understanding the matter, for since Islam does not involve itself in the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, how then can it set in contrast the theocratic state with the secular state?”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Tidak seperti Kristen-Barat, kita tidak terlalu bersandar kepada, dalam aspek teologi dan metafisika, teori-teori dari para filsuf, ahli metafisika, saintis, palentolog, antropolog, sosiolog, ahli psikoanalisa, ahli metamatika, ahli-ahli bahasa dan cendekiawan sekular lain semacamnya. Hal ini kerana kebanyakan mereka, jika tidak semuanya, tidak pernah emngamalkan kehidupan beragama, mereka yang tidak pernah mengetahui atau meyakini agama tanpa ragu-ragu dan tanpa terombang-ambing. Mereka juga terdiri dari orang yang skeptik, agnostik, ateis dan para peragu.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“The greatest challenge that has surreptitiously arisen in our age is the challenge of knowledge, indeed, not as against ignorance; but knowledge as conceived and disseminated throughout the world by Western civilization; knowledge whose nature has become problematic because it has lost its true purpose due to being unjustly conceived, and has thus brought about chaos in man's life instead of, and rather than, peace and justice; knowledge which pretends to be real but which is productive of confusion and scepticism, which has elevated doubt and conjecture to the 'scientific' rank in methodology; knowledge which has, for the first time in history, brought chaos to the Three Kingdom of Nature; the animal, vegetal and mineral.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality

“The International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC)... to establish a superior library reflecting the religious and intellectual traditions both of the Islamic and Western civilizations.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Injustice, being the opposite of justice, is the putting a thing in a place not its own; it is to misplace a thing; it is to misuse or to wrong; it is to exceed or fall short of the mean or limit; it is to suffer loss; it is deviation from the right course; it is disbelief of what is true, or lying about what is true knowing it to be true. -Islam and Secularism page 78”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

“Islam menolak secara total penerapan apapun dari konsep-konsep sekular, sekularisasi atau sekularisme atas dirinya, kerana semuanya itu bukanlah milik Islam dan asing baginya dalam segala segi. Konsep-konsep tersebut merupakan milik dan hanya wajar dalam konteks sejarah intelektual Kristen-Barat, baik pengalaman maupun kesedaran keagamaannya.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“Contrary to the invariable translation of the word ikhtiyar by 'choice', we maintain that ikhtyar does not simply mean 'choice'. The word khayr, meaning 'good', which is bound in meaning with ikhtiyar and being derived from the same root, determines that the choice meant is towards what is good. This point is most important when aligned to the philosophical question of freedom. A so-called 'choice' towards what is bad is therefore not a choice. Since we affirm that freedom is to act as our real and true nature demands, only the exercise of that choice which is good can properly be called 'free choice'. A choice for the better is an exercise of freedom. It presupposes knowledge of good and evil. A 'choice' for the worse is not a choice, as it is based upon ignorance and on the instigation of the soul that inclines towards the blameworthy aspects of the animal powers.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam

“Pernyataan bahwa sekularisasi mempunyai akarnya di dalam kepercayaan Injil dan merupakan natijah dari ajaran Injil, tidak didukung oleh fakta sejarah. Akar sekularisasi bukan adlam kepercayaan kitab Injil, melainkan di dalam tafsiran manusia Barat terhadap kepercayaan kitab tersebut; ini bukanlah buah dari ajaran Injil, tetapi natijah dari sejarah panjang perseteruan dalam filsafat dan metafisika antara pandangan alam (worldview) manusia Barat yang bersandarkan agama dengan yang rasionalis murni.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam and Secularism

“The nature of God understood in Islam is not the same as the conceptions of God understood in the various religious traditions of the world; nor is it the same as the conceptions of God understood in Greek and Hellenistic philosophical tradition; nor as the conceptions of God understood in Western philosophical or scientific tradition; nor in that of Occidental and Oriental mystical traditions. The apparent similarities that may be found between their various conceptions of God with the nature of God understood in Islam cannot be interpreted as evidence of identity of the One Universal God in their various conceptions of the nature of God; for each and everyone of them serves and belongs to a different conceptual system, which necessarily renders the conception as a whole or the super system to be dissimilar with one another....

Nor is there a 'transcendent unity of religions', if by 'unity' is meant 'oneness' or 'sameness'; and if by 'unity' is not meant 'oneness' or 'sameness', then there is plurality or dissimilarity of religions even at the level of transcendence. If it is conceded that there is plurality or dissimilarity at that level, and that by 'unity' is meant 'interconnectedness of parts that constitute a whole', so that the 'unity' is the interconnection of the plurality or dissimilarity of religions as of parts constituting a whole, then it follows that at the level of ordinary existence, in which mankind is subject to the limitations of humanity and the material universe, any one religion is incomplete in itself, is in itself inadequate to realize its purpose, and can only realize its purpose, which is true submission to the One Universal God without associating with him any partner, rival, or like, at the level of transcendence. But religion is meant to realize its purpose precisely at the level of existence in which mankind is subject to the limitations of humanity and the material universe and not when mankind is not subject to these limitations as the term 'transcendent' conveys.

If 'transcendent' is meant to refer to an ontological condition not included under any of the ten categories, God is, strictly speaking, not the God of religion (i.e. ilah) in the sense that there could be such a thing as a 'unity' of religions at that level. At that level God is recognized as rabb, not as ilah; and recognizing Him as rabb does not necessarily imply oneness or sameness in the proper acknowledgement of the truth that is recognized, since Iblis also recognized God as rabb and yet did not properly acknowledge Him. Indeed, all of Adam's progeny have already recognized Him as rabb at that level. But mankind's recognition of Him as such is not true unless followed by proper acknowledgement at that level in which He is known as ilah. And proper acknowledgement at the level in which He is known as ilah consists in not associating Him with any partner, rival, or like, and in submitting to Him in the manner and form approved by Him and shown by His sent Prophets.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam

“Islamic tradition does not recognize such presumptuous and conceited preoccupation as "reviewing", which is now widely practised among scholars who regard highly this legacy of the Western tradition modern scholarship. a Muslim scholar, with the work of another before him, would either - according to Islamic tradition - refute it (radd), or elaborate it further in commentary (sharh) as the occasion demands. there is no such thing as "reviewing" it, whether the "review" is termed as such or as any other term which describes it. If there are petty mistakes they turn a blind eye to them; if there are obscurities they explain them in commentary - they polish a positive work and make it shine.”
― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Comments on the Re-Examination of Al-Raniri's Hujjatu'l-Siddiq: A Refutation