Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " 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

3 " 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

4 " 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

5 " 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

6 " 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

7 " 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

8 " 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

9 " Manuscripts - at least for Muslims who understand the subject - are to be read as books whose contents are to be known and understood, for that is why they were written, and not to be regarded as enigmatic specimens for critical textual and philological exercises. To them what is in the manuscripts is more important than what is on them, and so they say: Al-'ilmu fi'l-sudur la fi'l-sutur. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas , Comments on the Re-Examination of Al-Raniri's Hujjatu'l-Siddiq: A Refutation

10 " Neither the student nor I would mind in the least fair criticism and correction, but no one will permit himself to suffer criticism and correction from another whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is less than the one criticized and corrected; whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is susceptible to doubt as to its true worth and validity. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas , Comments on the Re-Examination of Al-Raniri's Hujjatu'l-Siddiq: A Refutation

11 " 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

12 " 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

13 " 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

14 " 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

15 " 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

16 " Justru sesungguhnya akibat konsep yang singkat mengenai tinjauan dan luasan pengkajian bahasa, kesusasteraan dan kebudayaan Melayu itu, sehingga disamarkan hanya sebagai “Pengajian Melayu”, telah pula membawa akibat2 yang mempengaruhi penyingkiran bidang ilmiah tertentu dari pengajian Melayu, seperti pengkajian2 bahasa dan kesusasteraan Arab, bahasa dan kesusasteraan Farsi, bahasa dan kesusasteraan Sanskrit, yang kesemuanya telah memberi sumbangan yang berkesan dalam perkembangan bahasa dan kesusasteraan Melayu. Tambahan pula, bidang2 seperti sejarah pemikiran, falsafah, dan ilmu2 yang berkaitan dengan metodoloji penyelidikan ilmiah, kajian2 mengenai teori2 yang memang berkembang dengan pesatnya di Eropa, dewasa itu dan sekarang, semua ini diabaikan dalam pengkajian bidang2 kechil tertentu saja. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas ,

17 " In the entire vista of Malay literature—including even the Indonesian literatures—he was unique. None rivalled him in originality and poetic genius; in Malay Sufi literature none excelled the clarity and flowing simplicity of his prose which, nevertheless, reveals profound metaphysical insight in the Sufi doctrines; none exceeded him in poetry, whether it be in terms of literary output or in terms of intellectual content. He was, as I have earlier shown, the first man to set forth in systematic writing the essential aspects of the Şufi doctrines in Malay, and he not only impressed his influence upon certain historiographically important literary usages in Malay literature, but introduced as well new technical terminologies and concepts into the Malay language in general, and into Malay Sufi literature in particular, having do with theology, metaphysics and philosophy. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas ,

18 " Hamzah’s sha’ir derived its original or primary influence not from the ruba’i, but from the four-line shi’r of Ibnu’l-Arabi and ‘Iraqi which forms the bulk of quotations of Sufi poetry in his works. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas ,

19 " It seems to me that apart from the aptness of the Malay language in the construction of four-lined verses with a AAAA pattern of rhyme, the influence of Ibnu’l-‘Arabi’s and ‘Iraqi’s four-line shi’r and Jami’s ruba’i, the concept of the bayt and the shi’r in Arabic and Persian prosody, the creative genius of the poet, Hamzah’s choice of the four-line shi’r composed of a single bayt could well have been influenced also by the symbolism in the Sufi doctrines. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas ,

20 " The analogy of the fourfold Law Way, Truth and Gnosis in which they are compared to a house may be said to be a static one, and this is because what is aimed at here is comprehension of the concept of the absolute unity of the Way to the Truth; but the spiritual journey itself is a dynamic concept, and hence sometimes the fourfold unity of the Way to the Truth is also to a ship (kapal) whose keel is like the Law, whose planks are like the Way, whose content or merchandise is like the Truth and whose gain is like the spiritual gain of Gnosis. "

― Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas ,