Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas Quotes

The International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC)... to establish a superior library reflecting the religious and intellectual traditions both of the Islamic and Western civilizations.

Neither the student nor I would mind in the least fair criticism and correction, but no one will permit himself to suffer criticism and correction from another whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is less than the one criticized and corrected; whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is susceptible to doubt as to its true worth and validity.

Manuscripts - at least for Muslims who understand the subject - are to be read as books whose contents are to be known and understood, for that is why they were written, and not to be regarded as enigmatic specimens for critical textual and philological exercises. To them what is in the manuscripts is more important than what is on them, and so they say: Al-'ilmu fi'l-sudur la fi'l-sutur.

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.

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.

When the man, by means if 'ibadat, succeeded in curbing his animal and canal passions and has thereby rendered submissive his animal soul,making it subject to the rational soul, the man thus described has attained to freedom and existence;he has achieved supreme peace and his soul is pacified, being set at liberty, as it were, free from fetters of inexorable fate and the noisy strife and hell of human vices.

Justice and injustice indeed begins and ends with the 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).