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Al-Attas on 'Islamic civilization'

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas’s definition of ‘Islamic civilization’:

“I define Islamic civilization as a civilization that emerges among the diversity of cultures of Muslim peoples of the world as a result of the permeation of the basic elements of the religion of Islam which those peoples have caused to emerge from within themselves. The process by which such emergence comes about is called Islamization, which is the liberation first from magical, mythical, animistic and ethnic cultural tradition incompatible with Islam, and then from secular control over one’s reason and one’s language. Whatever basic and praiseworthy elements of the pre-Islamic civilization that bind people together and are accepted as compatible with Islam become part of Islamic civilization. It is a living civilization whose pulse describes a process of Islamization, not in the dialectical sense of an evolutionary ‘development’, but in the sense of a progress involving every generation of Muslim towards realization of the original nature and spirit of Islam as something already established in history; in the sense of an unfolding of the theoretical and practical principles of Islam in the life of the people; in the sense of an actualization of the essentials and potentials of Islam in the realms of existence. This progress, unfolding, and actualization depend upon the levels of knowledge of Islam, of intellectual and cultural attainment of the peoples in which the progress, unfolding and actualization occur. Islamic civilization is therefore a manifestation of unity in diversity as well as of diversity in unity.”

(Historical Fact and Fiction, Johor, Malaysia: Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Press, 2011, xv)

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