In his 1978 work titled Islam and Secularism, Syed Naquib Al-Attas discusses what he believes to be the main cause behind the modern Muslim predicament. This according to him is simply a loss of Adab which has rendered the Muslim World weak and susceptible to the challenges brought about by Western domination. He says on page 105,
“As to the internal causes of the dilemma in which we find ourselves, the basic problems can– it seems to me–be reduced to a single evident crisis which I would simply call the loss of adab. I am here referring to the loss of discipline– the discipline of body, mind and soul; the discipline that assures the recognition and acknowledgment of one’s proper place in relation to one’s self, society and Community; the recognition and acknowledgment of one’s proper place in relation to one’s physical, intellectual and spiritual capacities and potentials; the recognition and acknowledgement of the fact that knowledge and being are ordered hierarchically.”
According to Attas the loss of adab is synonymous with injustice, as adab enables the human being to know of the proper place of all things, his own self, society, knowledge and ultimately the Cosmos, all in relation to God. Thus, to lose adab entails losing proper knowledge of the hierarchies of the aforementioned things. A loss of adab engenders within the individual and society at large a state of disorder, confusion, and ultimately injustice. This concoction of disorder resulting from a loss of adab according to Attas eventually manifests as “corrupt” knowledge. Knowledge which results from inquiries that are not grounded in adab that is to say when the inquirer does not recognise the proper place of all things, such knowledge is a recipe for ruination. It is the corruption of knowledge resulting directly from a condition of self-created injustice that poses the gravest of dangers to Muslim societies at large. Attas speaks of the emergence of ‘false leaders’ as a direct consequence of this corruption of knowledge. He says on page 106,
“In respect of the society and community, the confusion in knowledge of Islam and the Islamic worldview creates the condition of injustice. They perpetuate this condition since it ensures the continued emergence of leaders like them to replace them after they are gone, perpetuating their domination over the affairs of the Community.”
The corruption of knowledge i.e. the loss of an Islamic worldview, and the emergence of false leaders are in a sense intertwined in a circular feedback loop. Loss of adab in Muslim societies enables the emergence of false leaders, while the false leaders knowingly fan the fire of injustice, ensuring that many shall follow them in their footsteps. These leaders according to Attas lack the necessary elements required for the leadership of the Muslim community be it political, spiritual or economic. They lack in both dimensions spiritual and intellectual, thus becoming conduits for chaos instead of order. No rectification of the Muslim condition is possible without first acknowledging its root cause. The treatment then of this situation revolves around the individual Muslim and the community as a whole recognizing true authority in Islam. Attas further clarifies this on page 107,
“The interpretation and clarification of knowledge about Islam and the Islamic world view is accomplished by authority, and legitimate authority recognizes and acknowledges a hierarchy of authorities culminating in the Holy Prophet (PBUH).”
For in order to culminate in the modern Muslim consciousness a state of adab one’s attitude towards the tradition must be of reverence and humility. The modern Muslim must acknowledge his or her proper place in the larger teleios of Islamic civilization. That their place in history is many orders of magnitude behind the giants of the past. Thus, a strong degree of humility is a necessary undertaking on the path to establish justice within the broader Muslim world. This can only be actualised by acknowledging the inherent hierarchy in intelligence, spiritual knowledge and virtue, which is itself a reflection of the order inherent in the macrocosm. On page 108, Attas states,
“God is the Just, and He fashions and deploys all Creation in justice. In order that mankind generally might recognise and acknowledge the just order–”
This justice permeates at all levels of existence with the anchor being God the Necessary Existence (Wajib-ul Wujud) who causes the origination of khalq (creation), and sustains it with his Qudrah (Power). Man occupies the highest rank with respect to the other creations, while within mankind the Prophets occupy the highest strata, and then those in proximity to them. It is within this cosmic order that the individual Muslim must learn to place themselves. A rejection of this reality is the cause of disorder and anarchy that pervades so much of the Muslim world. It breeds an arrogance that blinds one to their proper place in the cosmos. Attas further comments on page 108 that,
“In respect of the individual, the confusion in knowledge of Islam and the Islamic worldview very often creates in him an overweening sort of individualism: he thinks himself the equal of others who are in reality superior to him, and cultivates immanent arrogance and obstinacy and tends to reject authority.”
Such individuals are the false leaders that emerge as a consequence of pursuing injustice as opposed to justice i.e. adab. This arrogance coupled with corrupt knowledge reveals itself in a very characteristic reactionary behaviour within various segments of Muslim communities that Attas categorizes as ‘levelling’. The process of levelling is aimed at demolishing legitimate authority in Islam, to equalise in a way the modern ‘false leader’ with those of the past. The levelling in a way creates a sort of ground zero over which the contemporary ‘confused’ leader can hope to construct the edifice of his version of Islam. The bull-dozing of true hierarchy is the first step, while the second is over-emphasis on the human erring of those of the past. The relishing in promulgating and obsessing over the errors acts as a means to discredit any semblance of hierarchy in the Islamic tradition, allowing the false leader to present himself as a renewer or reformer of the religion. With regard to the errors of the previous generations, Attas says on page 111,
“Moreover these so called errors and mistakes do not in the least negate the validity of their thoughts reflected in their works and their deeds, nor of their rightful places in the life of the Community throughout the ages.”
The irony is that the leveller despite his claim to start anew inevitably invites someone else to commence another levelling project of their own. Thus, each false leader begets another, which in turn begets another ad infinitum. The loss of adab and the resulting intellectual and spiritual chaos creates in a sense a potential infinity of levellers. This phenomenon is quite prevalent in most Muslim environments. We hear all too often the discovery of a ‘fresh, pure and pristine’ Islam as opposed to the ‘superstition, kingship and legalism’ that according to them has been passed down in the garb of religion. The discoverer claims to have delivered the religion from corruption, and claims to have found the one true Islam that somehow was lost 1300 years ago. However, in a short span of time we see the emergence of another ‘leveller’, and then another. Sometimes multiple levellers simultaneously making the same overzealous claims. All of them manifestations of corrupt knowledge, be they the modern reformists or their traditional counterparts. Attas comments on their fundamental similarity on page 116,
“All are prone to levelling everyone to the same level of equality, notwithstanding the fact that even in God’s Sight we are not at all the same and equal. Indeed, we are all the same in point of being creatures of God, in point of being human beings, cast in flesh and blood. But our spirits, our souls, though derived from that One Spirit, and though essentially the same are, in point of power and magnitude, not the same, not equal.”
Attas’s diagnosis and the articulation of the core problem of the modern Muslim is quite unique. Operationally, it is formulated in such a way that does share similarities with other such shemas. A loss of something has occurred, that being Adab, however regaining Adab is not a straightforward matter since the modern Muslim individual has fostered within himself a state of injustice that results from corrupt knowledge. That state can be rectified only through the correction of one’s worldview, which can according to Attas only be achieved by engaging with the past with respect and reverence. To acknowledge one’s place in a long and luminous tradition. There appears to be according to Attas, no single reactionary solution such as state capture, or to embrace modernity or to throw away the tradition or mold it in the form of scientism. No fiddling with metrics such as GDP per capita or the amount of researchers per some sample size can stem the rot of a spiritual and intellectual crisis. A deeper and more reflective approach is needed, which according to Attas begins with the correct diagnosis.
Afkar-e-Qurtuba 