Islamic Philosophy: An Introduction

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas.

From the perspective of Islam, a ‘worldview’ is not merely the mind’s view of the physical world and of man’s historical, social, political and cultural involvement in it as reflected, for example, in the current Arabic expression of the idea formulated in the phrase nazrat al-islam li al-kawn. It is incorrect to refer to the worldview of Islam as a nazrat alislam li al-kawn. This is because, unlike what is conveyed by nazrat, the worldview of Islam is not based upon philosophical speculation formulated mainly from observation of the data of sensible experience, of what is visible to the eye; nor is it restricted to kawn, which is the world of sensible experience, the world of created things. If such expressions are now in use in Arabic in contemporary Muslim thought, it only demonstrates that we are already being unduly influenced by the modern, secular Western scientific conception of the world that is restricted to the world of sense and sensible experience. Islam does not concede to the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane; the worldview of Islam encompasses both al-dunyā and al-ākhirah, in which the dunyā-aspect must be related in a profound and inseparable way to the ākhirah-aspect, and in which the ākhirah-aspect has ultimate and final significance. The dunyā-aspect is seen as a preparation for the ākhirah-aspect. Everything in Islam is ultimately focused on the ākhirah-aspect without thereby implying any attitude of neglect or being unmindful of the dunyā-aspect. Reality is not what is often ‘defined’ in modern Arabic dictionaries as wāqicīyyah, whose use, particularly in its grammatical form wāqicīy, is now in vogue. Reality is haqīqah, which significantly is now seldom used due to theSyed al-Attas preoccupation with wāqicīyyah which only points to factual occurrences. A factual occurrence is only one aspect in many of haqīqah, whose ambit encompasses all of reality. Moreover, a factual occurrence may be an actualization of something false (i.e. bātil); whereas reality is the actualization always of something true (i.e. haqq). What is meant by ‘worldview’, according to the perspective of Islam, is then the vision of reality and truth that appears before our mind’s eye revealing what existence is all about; for it is the world of existence in its totality that Islam is projecting. Thus by ‘worldview’ we must mean rucyyāt al-islam li al-wujūd. The Islamic vision of reality and truth, which is a metaphysical survey of the visible as well as the invisible worlds including the perspective of life as a whole, is not a worldview that is formed merely by the gathering together of various cultural objects, values and phenomena into artificial coherence.1 Nor is it one that is formed gradually through a historical and developmental process of philosophical speculation and scientific discovery, which must of necessity be left vague and open-ended for future change and alteration in line with paradigms that change in correspondence with changing circumstances. It is not a worldview that undergoes a dialectical process of transformation repeated through the ages, from thesis to antithesis then synthesis, with elements of each of these stages in the process being assimilated into the other, such as a worldview based upon a system of thought that was originally god centered, then gradually became godworld centered, and is now world centered and perhaps shifting again to form a new thesis in the dialectical process. Such a worldview changes in line with ideological ages characterized by a predominance of the influence of particular and opposing systems of thought advocating different interpretations of worldview and value systems like that which have occurred and will continue to occur in the history of the cultural, religious and intellectual tradition of the West.