Secularization, And Secularism By Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas

Islam & Secularism is one of the most remarkable work by Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas also known as Professor Al-Attas is an outstanding contemporary Muslim scholar. He is a standout amongst those contemporary researchers who completely established in the field of traditional Islamic sciences and he is a very skillful in a field of theology, philosophy, metaphysics, and history. I assumed that this book has been a main reference in many of Muslim as well as non-Muslims researches concerning the concepts of secularism and worldview. In this book, Prof. al-Attas succeeded in developing the ideas comprehensively to the readers concerning the topic discussed in terms of its topic development, history, references, and answers to the problems. Syed

The author started the chapter by introducing or defining the term secular. The meaning of secular is originated from the word saeculum, which refers to the place and time and from this concept, this is how the westerners viewed the religion as the historical part of the culture and lead to the process of secularism. The process of secularism begins when there is a clash or the separation between the church authority and the leader of state. The church is strictly opposed the idea of scientific knowledge that carried by the state. As the consequences there were separation between religion and scientific or logical knowledge. The westernized knowledge is starting point of the secular knowledge when they totally rejected the concept of God in the knowledge and believe religion is traditional. Thus, the concept of secularism is refers to an ideology due to the process of revolution from tradition to

This topic talks about what Islam it really is. The concept of Islam refers to ad-din in the Holy Quran is not the same with the concept of other religion. According to the author, the concept ad-din can be signified in several terms which are being indebtedness, submissiveness, judicious power and natural tendency. Man is indebted to Allah, the one who brings human’s existence to the world and because of we as human is indebted to Allah, we must fill the responsibilities to pay the debts by the submission to Him. The concept of submission in Islam is referring to the Ibadah which means our good deeds. The natural tendency is refers to the fitrah that man always go back to his