Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

Syed Muhammad al Naquib bin Ali al-Attas (سيد محمد نقيب العطاس ; born 5 September 1931) is a Malaysian Muslim philosopher.

He is one of the few contemporary scholars who is thoroughly rooted in the traditional Islamic sciences and studies theology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, and literature.

He pioneered the concept of Islamisation of knowledge.

Al-Attas' philosophy and methodology of education have one goal: Islamisation of the mind, body and soul and its effects on the personal and collective life on Muslims as well as others, including the spiritual and physical non-human environment.

He is the author of 27 works on various aspects of Islamic thought and civilisation, particularly on Sufism, cosmology, metaphysics, philosophy and Malay language and literature.

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas was born in Bogor, Java, Dutch East Indies into a family with a history of illustrious ancestors, saints.

Some sources states his genealogical tree can be traced over a thousand years through the Ba' Alawi sayyids of Hadramaut.

He was the second of three sons; his older brother, Syed Hussein Alatas later became an academian and politician.

He is the cousin of the academic Ungku Abdul Aziz.

After World War II, in 1946 he returned to Johor to complete his secondary education.

He was exposed to Malay literature, history, religion, and western classics in English.

After al-Attas finished secondary school in 1951, he entered the Malay Regiment as a cadet officer.

There he was selected to study at Eaton Hall, Chester, England and later at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, UK (1952–1955).

During this time he became interested in metaphysics of the Sufis, especially the works of Jami.

He travelled to Spain and North Africa where the Islamic heritage had a profound influence on him.

Al-Attas felt the need to study, and voluntarily resigned from the King's Commission to serve in the Royal Malay Regiment, to pursue studies at the University of Malaya in Singapore (1957–1959).

While an undergraduate at University of Malaya, he wrote Rangkaian Ruba'iyat, a literary work, and Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised among the Malays.

He was awarded the Canada Council Fellowship for three years of study at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal.

He authored Rangkaian Ruba'iyyat a literary work that was among the first ever published in 1959 and the classic work, Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised Among the Malays, in 1963.

He received the M.A. degree with distinction in Islamic philosophy in 1962, with his thesis Raniri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh.

Al-Attas went on to the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he worked with Professor A.J. Arberry of Cambridge and Martin Lings.

His doctoral thesis (1962) was a two-volume work on the mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri.

In 1965, al-Attas returned to Malaysia and became Head of the Division of Literature in the Department of Malay Studies at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

His two-volume doctoral thesis on The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri, which is the most important and comprehensive work to date on one of the greatest and perhaps the most controversial Sufi scholars in the Malay world earned him the PhD in the UK in 1965.

Al-Attas engaged in polemics on the subjects of Islamic history, philology, and Malay literary history and Sha'ir.

He established that Hamzah Fansuri was the originator of the Malay Sha'ir.

He has also set forth his ideas on the categorisation of Malay literature and periodisation of its literary history.

He contributed to the history and origin of the modern Malay language.

He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1968 until 1970, where he instituted more consultative reforms.

Thereafter he moved to the new National University of Malaysia, as Head of the Department of Malay Language and Literature and then Dean of the Faculty of Arts.

He advocated the use of Malay as the language of instruction in the university.

He was also responsible for the formulation and conceptualisation of the role of the Malay language in nation building during debates with political leaders in 1968.

This formulation and conceptualisation was one of the important factors that led to the consolidation of Malay as the national language of Malaysia.

As the Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Malaya, he implemented a more systematic implementation of Malay as an intellectual and academic language in the university.

He founded and directed the Institute of Malay Language, Literature, and Culture (IBKKM) at the National University of Malaysia in 1973.

In 1987, with al-Attas as founder and director, the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC) was established in Kuala Lumpur.

The institution was made to increase the consciousness of Islam to its students and faculty.

Al-Attas incorporated Islamic artistic and architectural principles throughout the campus and grounds.

His commentaries on the ideas of Fansuri and al-Raniri are the first definitive ones on early Malay Sufis based on 16th- and 17th-century manuscripts.

In fact he discovered and published his meticulous research on the oldest extant Malay manuscript, wherein among other important matters, he also solved the issue on arrangements of the Malay-Islamic cyclical calendar.