Clarification of the term “World View” by Syed Naquib Al Attas

Human being is a unique creature by itself. The ability to speak and reasoning gives him an ability to create wonders as well terrible things too. His action, be it visible one like walking and invisible one like thinking are strongly being influenced by his weltanschauung or worldview.

According to al-Attas, a worldview is a metaphysical survey of both visible and invisible world. Al-Attas elaborated:

“From the perspective of Islam, a ‘worldview’ is not merely the mind’s view of the physical world and of man’s historical, social, political and cultural involvement in it as reflected, for example, in the current Arabic expression of the idea formulated in the phrase nazrat al-islam li al-kawn. The worldview of Islam is not based upon philosophical speculation formulated mainly from observation of the data of sensible experience, of what is visible to the eye; nor is it restricted to kawn, which is the world of sensible experience, the world of created things. There is no dichotomy between sacred and profane; the worldview of Islam encompasses both al-dunya and al-akhirah.

Reality is not what is often ‘defined’ in modern Arabic dictionaries as waqi’iyyah whose uses, particularly in its grammartical form waqi’iy is now in vogue. Reality ishaqiqah, which significantly is now seldom used due to the preoccupation with waqi’iyyah which only points to factual occurrences. A factual occurrence is only one aspect in many of haqiqah, whose ambit encompasses all of reality.

What is meant by ‘worldview’, according to the perspective of Islam is then the vision of reality and truth that appears before our mind’s eye revealing what existence is all about; for it is the world of existence in its totality that Islam is projecting. Thus by ‘worldview’ we must mean ru’yat al-islam li al-wujud.”

The Islamic vision of reality and truth, which is a metaphysical survey of the visible as well as the invisible worlds including the perspective of life as a whole, is not a worldview that is formed merely by the gathering together of various cultural objects, values and phenomena into artificial coherence. What al-Attas meant by artificial coherence, is a coherence that is not natural in the sense we mean as fitrah. Such coherence projected as a worldview must necessarily subject to change with the change of circumstances.

These fundamental elements act as integrating principles that place all our systems of meaning and stands of live and values in coherent order as a unified system forming the worldview; and the supreme principle of true reality that is articulated by these fundamental elements is focus on knowledge of the nature of God as revealed in the Qur’an.

"Defense against propaganda– The case of Islamic Worldview"

Despite the sophisticated technique of modern day propaganda and the successful rate of its application upon modern day society, alas all hope is not lost when it comes to construct our own defense against this onslaught.

The original Islamic worldview which has been formulated and explained succinctly by luminaries of great Islamic scholars of the past would be able to confront this deceit without ever being confused and distorted as what we can see clearly today upon contemporary secularized worldview that being heavily influenced by modern scientific framework of Cartesian and Newtonian worldview.

The experience of Western civilization that constantly shift from one particular framework to another, which always in the state of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ is always in a state of incoherently fragile framework as al-Attas described:

“If we could strike even a superficial similitude between a worldview and a picture depicted in a jigsaw puzzle, the jigsaw of modernity is not only far from depicting any coherent picture, but also the very pieces to form such a picture do not fit. This is not to mention post modernity which is already undoing all the pieces.”

This state of incoherentness that prevailed in modern society especially in the west is very ripe for propaganda to exert its true potential in distorting their worldview thus giving birth to a deeper problem of confusion and error in knowledge. Truth and error can no longer be discerned properly as the worldview itself has become corrupted by foreign influences that de-emphasizing the permanent state in the meaning of truth and reality.

Al-Attas re-iterate the importance of reality and truth in confronting this distortion and confusion:

“One must see that the kind of problem confronting us is of such a profound nature as to embrace all the fundamental elements of our worldview that cannot simply be resolved by legalistic and political means. Law and order can only find their places when recognition of truth as distinguished from falsehood, and real as distinguished from illusory, is affirmed and confirmed by action in acknowledgement of the recognition. This is achieved by means of right knowledge and right method of disseminating it. So let us not dissipate our energies in attempting to find the way out by grouping in the labyrinths of legalism, but concentrate them instead by grappling the main problem, which is bound up intimately with the correct understanding and appreciation of religion and the worldview projected by it, because that directly concerns man, his knowledge and purpose in life, his ultimate destiny.”

This phenomenon best represented in the history of the west itself. The western civilization history is regarded as a phase changing experience and life altering period classical, medieval, and modern and postmodern these classification are artificial, their own making so make their life cohere with that worldview, they have to invent the millieu that somehow correspond with that dress (fashion), design of houses language, mannerism and the list goes own when Muslims tried to comply their life’s with the way of life that Islam dictates, that is true coherence, because that rules and regulations are true and real.

What makes our great Muslim ancestors could prevailed from insidious propaganda, be it in the form totalitarian one in the case of Mu’tazilites ideology in the days of Al-Ma’mun or even during the colonial era in 16th to 19th centuries, I think the success can be attributed by their ability to have a systematic exposition of our worldview that linked very well to the aqidah (creed) and the dynamic of the knowledge tradition in confronting, sifting and influence without compromising the basic tenets of our creed based on Qur’an and prophetic traditions (sunnah).

Our great scholars in the past did realized the importance of preserving the meaning of important key terms of worldview of Islam thus they are very careful in accepting alien concepts from being incorporated into the corpus of Islamic knowledge system like what al-Ghazali did by writing Tahafut al-falasifah (Incoherence of the philosopher) in confronting Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotelian version of worldview that could really jeopardize worldview of Islam.

Not to mention various lexicons being written to help protecting worldview of Islam such asKitab al-Ta’rifat by al-Jurjani, Lisan al-‘Arab by Ibn Manzur, and Kashf Istilahat al-Funun by al-Tahanawi. These important lexicons are also being used extensively with the correct usage of constructing sentences and detecting errors in doing them by learning Islamic logic (mantiq) through excellent works of Islamic logicians like Ibn Sina’s Al-Isharat wa al-Tanbihat. All of these tools had helped the Muslim to build an empire of mind that is so strong, coherent yet flexible when it comes to adapt in new surrounding and culture as long those foreign influences do not change the semantics of the key terms that had shaped the worldview of Islam. That is why, we can see Islam is flourishing in various parts of the world, yet geographical and sociological differences could not alter the fundamental aspects of worldview of Islam in any version of space and time.

One must have the proper tools to intellectually filter info-noise to extract only the pristine clear knowledge that lead to guidance and wisdom.

Propaganda can never thrive under this kind of environment where the worldview of its people stand upon true knowledge, in this case the worldview of Islam, rather than doubt and inner tensions that could be seen in the west currently as well in their history.