Naquib Al-Attas’ Islamization of Knowledge: Its Impact on Malay Religious Life, Literature, Language and Culture

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas (born 1931) is a Malaysian thinker who is world-renowned in the academic world and in the field of arts and culture. He received his higher education at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, and later at McGill University in Montreal as well as the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. His early writings mainly revolved around Sufism, and his most monumental work is The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri (1970). His other influential works include The Origin of the Malay Sha’ir (1968), The Correct Date of the Terengganu Inscription (1972), and Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (1995). He is also known for his eye for design and his skill in calligraphy, having founded and designed the building of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in Kuala Lumpur, which was officially opened in 1991.

It is common knowledge that the institute receives large funding from the Malaysian government and enjoys political support from the former president of the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (ABIM), and former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim. As Chandra Muzaffar (1987, p. 54) noted, “the person who had the greatest influence upon Anwar Ibrahim in his ABIM years was Syed Naquib Al-Attas, then Professor of Malay Literature at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM).” This was further highlighted by Mona Abaza (1999, p. 189) in her article “Intellectuals, Power and Islam in Malaysia: S.N. Al-Attas or the Beacon on the Crest of a Hill”, where she referred to Al-Attas as Anwar's “intellectual mentor”. According to Komaruddin Sassi (2020, pp. 53–54) who wrote his doctoral thesis on Al-Attas, it was Anwar who appointed him as the first occupant of the Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali Chair of Islamic Thought at ISTAC.

Beyond Anwar, Al-Attas had a wide impact on student movements and education in Malaysia in the 1970s, especially within the context of Islamic revivalism at the time. As Abaza put it, “his impact on the student movement of the seventies is substantial in reviving Islamic culture and rationalizing Sufism. If the early Al-Attas interpreted Hamzah Fansuri as a reformer and a rebellious Sufi thinker, ISTAC incorporated traits of ‘refeudalization’ and the institutionalization of an Islam of power” (Abaza 1999, p. 216).