Beyond Islamisation: A Progressive Muslim Critique of Al-Attas’ Epistemology and Vision of Islamic Tradition
Beyond Islamisation: A Progressive Muslim Critique of Al-Attas’ Epistemology and Vision of Islamic Tradition Adis Duderija The recent passing of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas invites renewed reflection on one of the most ambitious intellectual projects of the modern Muslim world: the “Islamization of knowledge.” Al-Attas sought to defend Islamic metaphysics and civilizational identity against what he saw as the corrosive effects of secular modernity. His critique of Western epistemology and his insistence that knowledge must be grounded in a coherent metaphysical worldview made him one of the most influential Muslim philosophers of the late twentieth century. Yet from the perspective of progressive Muslim thought, this project, while intellectually serious, rests on problematic assumptions about the nature of revelation, knowledge, and the Islamic tradition itself. At the core of al-Attas’ epistemology lies a hierarchical view of ...