Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas Quotes

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.

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).

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.

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.

Justice and injustice indeed begins and ends with the self.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.