Islam and Secularism

A book by the Malaysian thinker Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, first published in 1978, which argues that secularism is a Western worldview incompatible with Islam. Drawing on Western theologians who welcomed secularisation, al-Attas describes it as three processes: the disenchantment of nature, the desacralisation of politics and the deconsecration of values. He traces these to the history of Western Christianity and modern philosophy. He then sets out an Islamic view of religion, built on the Arabic word dīn with its senses of indebtedness, submission, judgement and natural inclination, and of the human being, knowledge and happiness. His central diagnosis is that the problems of Muslims stem from confusion and error in knowledge, which he calls the loss of adab, the recognition of the proper place of things, and which in turn produces false leaders. His remedy is the dewesternisation and Islamisation of contemporary knowledge through education. Critics question whether 'Islamising' knowledge is coherent and whether Islam and the West can be opposed so sharply.

It is a founding text of the movement to Islamise knowledge and a sharp Muslim critique of secular modernity, still widely read in Muslim universities.