The phrase "Islamisation of knowledge" was first used and proposed by the Malaysian scholar Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in his book "Islam and Secularism" ISBN 983-99628-6-8. Calling it a 'burgeoning enterprize', Vali Nasr equates Islamization of knowledge project with the 'Third worldist world-view of sorts', which, in his opinion, 'is rooted in the reassertion of Muslim religious loyalties in the face of cataclysmic changes which have torn many Muslim societies asunder'. He argues that the project has mostly been shaped 'in the spirit of a political discourse than a level-headed academic undertaking'. It was pioneered by the self-styled thinkers with no expertise in the field they were trying to revolutionize. Rather than advancing Islamic knowledge, it has caused disjuncture between knowledge and faith in Islam.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Iranian philosopher and University Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University.
Syed Muhammad al Naquib bin Ali al-Attas is a Malaysian Muslim philosopher. He is one of the few contemporary scholars who is thoroughly rooted in the traditional Islamic sciences and studies theology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, and literature. He pioneered the concept of Islamisation of knowledge. Al-Attas' philosophy and methodology of education have one goal: Islamisation of the mind, body and soul and its effects on the personal and collective life on Muslims as well as others, including the spiritual and physical non-human environment.
Ungku Abdul Aziz bin Ungku Abdul Hamid was a Malaysian economist and lecturer. He was the 3rd Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya from 1968 to 1988 and the 1st General Director of the Council on Language and Literature of Malaysia from 1956 until 1957. He was awarded the title of Royal Professor in 1978.
Farish Ahmad Noor is Professor at the Department of History, Faculty of the Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya.
Joseph E.B. Lumbard is an American Muslim scholar of Islamic studies and associate professor of Quranic studies at the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar. He is the author, editor, and translator of several scholarly books and many articles on Islamic philosophy, Sufism, and Quranic studies.
James Winston Morris is an American Islamic theologian, currently a professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College. Before teaching at Boston College, he held the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter.
Community Coalition Congress (CCC) or Malay: Kongres Penyatuan Masyarakat was formed and registered as a political party in 1988 to replace the Chinese Concultative Council (CCC) or Majlis Perundingan Cina wing formed by the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) in facing the Malaysian general election, 1986 to enable the space for the out-flow of supports of the Chinese community who are majority non-Muslim, but face the problem of internal opposition from the Islamic party and the reluctance to allow CCC supporters to be accepted and registered officially as party member, thus to represent PAS in the general election on its ticket.
Mehdi Aminrazavi is an Iranian scholar of philosophy and mysticism. He is the Kurt Leidecker Chair in Asian Studies and a professor of philosophy and religion as well as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies Program at the University of Mary Washington.
Zailan Moris is a Malaysian scholar of Islamic philosophy and former professor of the School of Humanities at the University Sains Malaysia. Her main interests are Islamic philosophy, comparative religion and Sufism.
Waleed El-Ansary is an Egyptian-American scholar of comparative religion, Islam and Islamic economics and the Helal, Hisham and Laila Edris El-Swedey University Chair in Islamic studies at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In traditionalist philosophy, desacralization of knowledge or secularization of knowledge is the process of separation of knowledge from its supposed divine source—God or the Ultimate Reality. The process reflects a paradigm shift in modern conception of knowledge in that it has rejected divine revelations as well as the idea of spiritual and metaphysical foundations of knowledge, confining knowledge to empirical domain and reason alone. Although it is a recurrent theme among the writers of the Traditionalist school that began with René Guénon, a French mystic and intellectual who earlier spoke of "the limitation of knowledge to its lowest order", the process of desacralization of knowledge was most notably surveyed, chronicled and conceptualized by the Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his 1981 Gifford Lectures that were later published as Knowledge and the Sacred.
Adnan Aslan is a Turkish Islamic scholar.
Islamic environmentalism is a strand of environmental philosophy as well as an Islamic movement that employs environmental principles derived from Islamic scriptures and traditions to the environment and the modern-day environmental crisis. Muslim environmentalists believe in God's absolute sovereignty over nature and emphasize humanity's role as God's vicegerent, making it their duty to protect and preserve the environment. Islamic environmentalism encompasses Islamic ecological philosophy, Sharia-based environmental law, and Islamic environmental activism.
In perennial philosophy, scientia sacra or sacred science is a form of spiritual knowledge that lies at the heart of both divine revelations and traditional sciences. It is seen as being in the center of that circle which defines and delineates a sacred tradition. It recognizes sources of knowledge other than those recognized by modern epistemology, such as divine revelations and intellectual intuition, the latter of which is considered a supra-rational form of knowledge based on the human intellect. Scientia sacra embodies principles and doctrines derived from reason, revelation and intellectual intuition, with the conviction that these sources of knowledge can be reconciled without conflict in a hierarchical order and employed in the human quest to understand different orders of reality. Its objective is to show how the transmitted, intellectual, and physical sciences are related and unified within the framework of metaphysics, as traditionally defined.
In perennial philosophy, tradition means divinely ordained truths or principles that have been communicated to humanity as well as an entire cosmic sector through various figures such as messengers, prophets, avataras, the Logos, or other transmitting agencies. According to this perspective, tradition does not refer to custom, habit, or inherited ways of thinking and living. Contrarily, it has a divine foundation and involves the transmission of the sacred message down through the ages. Used in this sense, tradition is synonymous with revelation, and it encompasses all forms of philosophy, art, and culture that are influenced by it.
Bruno Abd al Haqq Guiderdoni is a French astrophysicist. He is a research director at the CNRS, and a member of the Centre de recherche astrophysique de Lyon (CRAL). He was director of the Observatoire de Lyon from 2005 to 2015. His research is primarily concerned with the origin and development of galaxies. He has also written extensively on Islamic theology and mysticism.
In traditionalist philosophy, pontifical man is a divine representative who serves as a bridge between heaven and earth. Promethean man, on the other hand, sees himself as an earthly being who has rebelled against God and has no knowledge of his origins or purposes. This concept was notably developed in contemporary language by the Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Resacralization of nature is a term used in environmental philosophy to describe the process of restoring the sacred quality of nature. The primary assumption is that nature has a sanctified aspect that has become lost in modern times as a result of the secularization of contemporary worldviews. These secular worldviews are said to be directly responsible for the spiritual crisis in "modern man", which has ultimately resulted in the current environmental degradation. This perspective emphasizes the significance of changing human perceptions of nature through the incorporation of various religious principles and values that connect nature with the divine. The Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr first conceptualized the theme of resacralization of nature in contemporary language, which was later expounded upon by a number of theologians and philosophers including Alister McGrath, Sallie McFague and Rosemary Radford Ruether.
In traditionalist philosophy, resacralization of knowledge is the reverse of the process of secularization of knowledge. The central premise is that knowledge is intimately connected to its supposed divine source—God or the Ultimate Reality—which has been severed in modern times. The process of resacralization of knowledge seeks to reinstate the role of intellect—the divine faculty believed to exist in every human being—above and beyond that of reason, as well as to revive the role of traditional metaphysics in acquiring knowledge—especially knowledge of God—by drawing on sacred traditions and sacred science that uphold divine revelations and the spiritual or gnostic teachings of all revealed religions. Iranian philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr elaborated on the process of resacralization of knowledge in his book Knowledge and the Sacred, which was presented as Gifford Lectures in 1981.
