PROLEGOMENA^[1] TO THE METAPHYSICS OF ISLAM

AN EXPOSITION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS OF THE WORLDVIEW OF ISLAM

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas^[2]

Table of Contents^[3]

Preface

The conception and conceptualization of knowledge and the sciences, as well as the adaptation of methods and theories, are in each civilization formulated within the framework of its own metaphysical system forming its world-view. Each metaphysical system, and thus also the worldview it projects, is not the same for every other civilization; it differs from one another in accordance with differences in the interpretation of what is taken to be ultimately true and real.

If knowledge and the sciences that grow from it are not aligned to the statements and general conclusions of revealed Truth, then what is taken to be true may not always be truly so, nor what is taken to be real to be really so; and such interpretation must therefore undergo recurrent corrective revision necessitating what is called 'paradigm shifts' which involve also changes in the worldview and the metaphysical system that projects it. We do not agree with those who take the position that reality and truth, and values derived from them, are separate, and that they articulate their meanings within the paradigms of relativity and plurality having equal validity.

Since we maintain that knowledge is not entirely a property of the human mind, and that the sciences derived from it are not the products solely of unaided human reason and sense experience possessing an objectivity that preclude value judgement, but that knowledge and the sciences need guidance and verification from the statements and general conclusions of revealed Truth, it is incumbent upon scholars and the learned among us who are entrusted to teach and to educate to acquaint themselves with a clear understanding of the metaphysics of Islam and of the permanently estab lished constituent elements of the worldview derived from it.

This is because that metaphysics is not only established upon reason and experience as reflected in the intellectual and religious tradition of Islam, but aiso upon the articulation of the revealed religion itself about the nature of reality and of truth in verification of the Revelation. The book that now lies between your hands sets forth preliminary discourses on the nature of the metaphysics of Islam.

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

5 September, 1995/9 Rabi'al-Akhir 1416

KUALA LUMPUR

Introduction

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 al-islam 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-dunya and al-akhirah, in which the dunya-aspect must be related in a profound and inseparable way to the akhirah-aspect, and in which the akhirah-aspect has ultimate and final significance.

The dunya-aspect is seen as a preparation for the akhirah aspect. Everything in Islam is ultimately focussed on the akhirah-aspect without thereby implying any attitude of neglect or being unmindful of the dunya-aspect. Reality is not what is often 'defined' in modern Arabic dictionaries as wagiiyyah, whose use, particularly in its grammatical form wagity, is now in vogue. Reality is haqiah, which significantly is now seldom used due to the preoccupation with wagi iyyah which only points to factual occurrences. A factual occurrence is only one aspect in many of haqigah, whose ambit encompasses all of reality.
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Moreover, a factual occurrence may be an actualization of something false (i.e. batil); whereas reality is the actualiza-tion 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 ru'yat al-islam li al-wujud.

…

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.^[4] 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 god-world 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 likc that which have occurred and will continue to occur in the
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history of the cultural, religious and intellectual tradition of the West. There have not been in the history of the cultural, religious and intellectual tradition of Islam distinct ages characterized by a preponderance of a system of thought based upon materialism or idealism, supported by attendant methodological approaches and positions like empiricism, rationalism, realism, nominalism, pragmatism, positivism, logical positivism, criticism, oscillating between centuries and emerging one after another right down to our time. 

The representatives of Islamic thought - theologians, philosophers, metaphysicians — have all and individually applied various methods in their investigations without preponder-ating on any one particular method. They combined in their investigations, and at the same time in their persons, the empirical and the rational, the deductive and the inductive methods and affirmed no dichotomy between the subjective^[5] and the objective, so that they all affected what I would call the tawhid method of knowledge. 

Nor have there been in Islam historical periods that can be characterized as 'classical', then 'medieval', then 'modern' and now purportedly shifting again to 'post-modern'; nor critical events between the medieval and the modern experienced as a 'renaissance' and an 'enlightenment'. Proponents of shifts in systems of thought involving changes in the fundamental elements of the worldview and value system may say that all forms of cultures must experience such shifts, otherwise in the process of interaction with changing circumstances they exhaust
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themselves and become uncreative and petrified. But this is true only in the experience and consciousness of civilizations whose systems of thought and value have been derived from cultural and philosophical elements aided by the science of their times.

Islam is not a form of culture, and its system of thought projecting its vision of reality and truth and the system of value derived from it are not merely derived from cultural and philosophical elements aided by science, but one whose original source is Revelation, confirmed by religion, affirmed by intellectual and intuitive principles.

Islam ascribes to itself the truth of being a truly revealed religion, perfected from the very beginning, requiring no historical explanation and evaluation in terms of the place it occupied and the role it played within a process of development. All the essentials of the religion: the name, the faith and practice, the rituals, the creed and system of belief were given by Revelation and interpreted and demonstrated by the Prophet in his words and model actions, not from cultural tradition which necessarily must flow in the stream of historicism.

The religion of Islam was conscious of its own identity from the time of its revelation. When it appeared on the stage of world history Islam was already 'mature', needing no process of 'growing up' to maturity. 

Revealed religion can only be that which knows itself from the very beginning; and that self-knowledge comes from the Revelation itself, not from history. The so called 'development' in the religious traditions of mankind cannot be applied to Isiam, for what is assumed to be a developmental process is in the case of Islam only a process of interpretation and elaboration which must of necessity occur in alternating generations of believers of different nations, and which refer back to the unchanging Source.
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As such the worldview of Islam is characterized by an authenticity and a finality that points to what is ultimate, and it projects a view of reality and truth that encompasses existence and life altogether in total perspective whose fundamental elements are permanently estab-lished. These are, to mention the most salient ones, the nature of God; of Revelation (i.e. the Qur'an); of His creation; of man and the psychology of the human soul; of knowledge; of religion; of freedom; of values and virtues; of happiness - all of which, together with the key terms and concepts that they unfold, have profound bearing upon our ideas about change, development, and progress. I propose here in this Introduction to give a gist only of some of these fundamental elements of the worldview of Islam. 

A comprehensive statement of their nature is already set forth in the chapters of this book. It is these fundamental elements of our worldview that we maintain to be permanently established that modernity is challenging, seeing that the shifting systems of thought that have brought modernity forth from the womb of history were fathered by the forces of secular-ization as a philosophical ideology.

But as a matter of fact modernity or postmodernity has itself no coherent vision to offer that could be described as a worldview. If we could strike even a superficial similitude between a worldview and a picture depicted in a jigsaw puzzle, then the jigsaw of modernity is not only far from depicting any coherent pic-ture, but also the very pieces to form such a picture do not fit. 

This is not to mention postmodernity, which is already undoing all the pieces. No true worldview can come into focus when a grandscale ontological system to project it is denied, and when there is a separation between truth and reality and between truth and values. These fundamental elements act as integrating principles that place all our systems of meaning and standards of life and values in coherent order as a unified system forming the worldview; and the supreme principle of true reality that is articulated by these fundamental elements is focussed on knowledge of the nature of God as revealed in the Qur’an.
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The nature of God as revealed in Islam is derived from Revelation. We do not mean by Revelation the sudden visions great poets and artists claim for themselves; nor the apostolic inspiration of the writers of sacred scripture; nor the illuminative intuition of the sages and people of discernment.

We mean by it the speech of God concerning Himself, His creation, the relation between them, and the way to salvation communicated io His chosen Prophet and Messenger, not by sound or letter, yet comprising all that He has represented in words, then conveyed by the Prophet to mankind in a linguistic form new in nature yet comprehensible, without confusion with the Prophet's own subjectivity and cognitive imagination. This Revelation is final, and it not only confirms the truth of preceding revelations in their original forms, but includes their substance, separating the truth from cultural creations and ethnic inventions.

Since we affirm the Qur'an to be the speech of God revealed in a new form of Arabic, the description of His nature therein is therefore the description of Himself by Himself in His own words according to that linguistic form.

It follows from this that the Arabic of the Qur'an, its interpretation in the Tradition, and its authentic and authoritative usage throughout the ages establishes the validity of that language to a degree of eminence in serving to describe reality and truth. In this sense and unlike the situation prevailing in modernist and postmodernist thought, we maintain that it is not the concern of Islam to be unduly involved in the semantics of languages in general that philosophers of language find problematic as to their adequacy to approximate or correspond with true reality.

The conception of the nature of God that is derived from Revelation is also established upon the foundations of reason and intuition, and in some cases upon empirical intuition, as a result of man's experience and consciousness of Him and of His creation.
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The nature of God understood in Islam is not the same as the conceptions of God understood in the various religious traditions of the world; nor is it the same as the conceptions of God understood in Greek and Hellenistic philosophical tradition; nor as the conceptions of God understood in Western philosophical or scientific tradition; nor in that of Occidental and Oriental mystical traditions.

The apparent similarities that may be found between their various conceptions of God with the nature of God understood in Islam cannot be interpreted as evidence of identity of the One Universal God in their various conceptions of the nature of God//

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