Thinking Framework

by Muhammad Zainiy Uthman (Editor), Suleiman Mohammed Hussein Boayo (Editor), Mohd. Hilmi Ramli (Editor)

This collection of articles serves as the philosophical foundation for a research project on Thinking, Attitude,and Lifestyle Framework Among the Malaysian University Students, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education in 2016-2017. This study identifies key problems among university students concerning their understanding on knowledge, their purpose and meaning while being at the university, their attitudes towards the national and social integration, and their engagement in social media. Confusion, lack of meaning, and purpose in life resulted in low-esteem and extreme tendencies in their thought and action making them vulnerable to extremist tendencies in the name of ethnicity, race, and religion. Some are detached from social reality because they have succumbed to a sieged mentality.

Genres: Islam

258 pages, Tankobon Softcover

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Professor Dr. Muhammad Zainiy Uthman, a professor at the Center for Advanced Studies on Islam, Science and Civilisation (CASIS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, obtained his B.Sc. (1986) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (U.S.A.). After having completed his M.A. (1990) from the University of Chicago, he joined the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) in 1991 as Junior Research Fellow at the invitation of Professor al-Attas. Upon the completion of his Ph.D. at ISTAC in 1997, he served as Research Fellow, then Senior Research Fellow. He was an Associate Professor and Curator of ISTAC Library from 2002-2003 and was awarded the British Chevening Fellowship (2003-2004) where he spent an academic year at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. In 2005-2006 he returned to Oxford as Visiting Fellow at the same center. He translated al-Attas’ “The Meaning and Experience of Happiness in Islam” into Malay (ISTAC, 2002).

Reviews

[S.M.Y Kayseri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a splendid academic examination on how worldview affects the holistic growth of youths. The first few chapters are theoretical expositions regarding the metaphysics of the soul and its faculties. These chapters were the hardest because you have to be at least exposed to a general idea of the Western philosophy and the al-Attas’ criticism against it. The book then expanded into the practical realm, where the authors concluded that the ongoing crises among today’s youth are quintessentially due to their “rationalistic, dualistic, secular, humanistic and tragic” worldview. A cursory revision of the history of ideas revealed that the unified worldview of Christendom prior 12th century was abolished due to the clash between Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustus. They have different conceptions regarding internal metaphysics and little did they know that their squabbles would change the history entirely. Saint Thomas Aquinas advocated ratio, a more cognitive and rational approach in acquiring knowledge and thus faith, while Saint Augustine maintains that it is rather intellectus i.e. intellective illumination through faith that is required in acquiring knowledge. Saint Thomas Aquinas unknowingly opened the way for Aristotelian conjectures to be applied in religion metaphysics, eventually exposing religion to skepticism of Descartes later down the road. It is important to note that this schism did not affect the Muslims as much as the Christians, because of the wholesale rejection or rather isolation of the Neoplatonistic model of the mind proposed by Ibnu Sina and al-Farabi, and the stellar defence by imminent scholars such as al-Ghazzali and later al-Taftazani and others.

Thus, the metaphysics of the West circa the triumph of Acquinas is a botched project since its very conception. The field of philosophy since then, has truly been a battle between conjectures and premises. The Western civilisation was led by philosophers who built their arguments virtually from a cumulative faulty rationalistic tradition. But, their courage to keep going on despite the despair from their dualism should be applauded, yet the entire Western civilisation seen from the intellectual point of view can be drawn as a blind man trying to lead the rest of the horde of blind man in the dark. It would not be long before Cartesian dualism sprouted into full blown of tragic worldview; the Western man seemed to be perplexed by everything around him essentially due to his first philosophical dicta to doubt everything, which is basically a comical act of amputating the legs in order to walk.

[Nuruddin Azri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains eight essays dissecting on knowledge, thinking (fikr) and challenge of modernity faced by the current generation. The first four chapters tackle on the theory of knowledge (epistemology), Descartes’ mind-body dualism and process of reasoning throughout the canvas of Islamic history while the last four chapters focus on the challenge of modernity that penetrated the modern man, the hazard of technology and the limits of empirical science (reading Medawar’s The Limits of Science, Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful and Guide for the Perplexed, Postman’s Technopoly, SH Nasr’s Islam in the Modern World and Man and Nature will provide a good further elaboration on this topic).

Some of the most impactful writings about the human soul is as what Prof. al-Attas mentioned in “Tinjaun Ringkas Peri Ilmu”,

“Mereka telah berjaya menguasai alam sekeliling; mereka telah dapat merobah muka bumi; mereka telah dapat merobah aliran sungai, menjinakkan tenaga air; mereka telah menembusi angkasa lepas dan mendaki gunung-gunung yang belum pernah mengalami bekas jejak insan. Akan tetapi mereka tiada dapat menguasai diri, mengenali diri, mengarahkan diri menganuti suatu tujuan hidup yang membawa ketentuan dan ketenteraman kepada diri.”

Regarding the impact of modern (Western) mind coined by Prof. Ungku Aziz in Prospects for Economy Growth in Asia (1961),

“Many of them [Malaysian intellectuals] are products of education abroad—and indeed it is a very fine thing to leave Malaya and go to London. One finds wonderful theatres and concerts and very charming English girls who are so friendly. Our students sit in England and worry about the problems of the Common Market in Europe and join the protests about Africa until they finally graduate and their government says they had better come back home. Reluctantly they return, their only consolation being the prospect of good job which the government obligingly provides. Then the nostalgia begins. They look back on the days when they could go to the Albert Hall and hear Beethoven played by a famous orchestra, visit the art exhibitions and see those wonderful foreign films. Now there is nothing like that for them in their homeland, so they buy journals like the New Statesman and Nation and think back to their student days like self-created expatriates.”

“This is sad because instead of talking to those millions of Malay farmers who have no education and no roads and who are being exploited by moneylenders, they are much more interested in the negro problems in America or in the race policies of South Africa. If one asks them about home problems and what they are doing about them, as often as not one is invited to meet the latest United Nations expert who is shortly due to arrive. The reception for him becomes to them of more interest than the problem he has come to investigate. This has so often been the story of our graduates from Oxford and Cambridge, Cairo and Melbourne. Maybe they are changing now—for circumstances will force them to change.”

“If they do not face the challenge in their own country, other people are going to do it—other people who did not go to Cairo, to Oxford, to Sydney or to Tokyo; Malaya like all of Asia, has tremendous task—to solve the problems of economic growth and poverty gaps. In that task, the intellectuals must lead the way and to do so, their first need is to re-orient their thinking to the fundamentals of the Asian situation.”

Last but not least, regarding the inequality, capitalism and the critique of modern technology as mentioned by Hawking,

“If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”