It is not in my habit to be overly concerned with ostensibly 'reliable' views on any issue by any writer published (on-line or otherwise) in our newspapers, especially if they are given on a routine basis for weekly columns.

I find it hard to believe that such views can be the fruits of 'considerable academic research ... undertaken before pen was put to paper, finger to keyboard,'[1] as Farish Noor so charitably claims for himself.

Despite myself, however, Farish Noor's recent piece, 'Rethinking Islamisation of the Malay World', (July 21) in his 'The Other Malaysia' column for malaysiakini was brought to my notice.

Since this piece touches at some length on the intellectual mission of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, and since I am a serious student of his ideas, I feel it warrants a response, less for Farish Noor's enlightenment than for inviting his educated readers to read al-Attas's works for themselves.

Direct access to the original sources is the best way to avoid the very same 'caricatural, bordering on simplistic' portrayal of 'the Other' so repeatedly deplored by Farish Noor himself.

Kern and al-Attas

Farish Noor has shown himself to be quite capable of taking the trouble to put interesting issues under 'the light of close scrutiny' (the clamour over Ning's graphic sexual fantasies for instance).[3]

Such a laudable attitude is however evidently lacking in his flippant dismissal of al-Attas. Flippant, because he fails to provide indicative support where it truly matters, and thus his piece serves only to bring into stark relief his overly enthusiastic, even patronising reception of R A Kern's 'observations' (assuming he has bothered to represent them 'accurately' much less analyse them critically).

On reaching the end of his column, one gets the feeling that his whole purpose is to give a positive review of R A Kern in particular and of Alijah Gordon and the MSRI in general. Fine, but what exactly are the specific connections between Kern and al-Attas to warrant, in the review process, such a sordid exercise in diatribes against the latter?

In the whole of that sizable volume of scholarly essays, The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago , so 'scrupulously' edited and 'carefully' annotated by Gordon, not a single author engages al-Attas, either directly or indirectly.

Even G W J Drewes, in his emotionally detached assessment of Kern, finds no reason to engage al-Attas. His name is cited only in the 'Additional Bibliography' and in three footnotes, by Drewes, Gordon and P. Manguin respectively.

Obviously these authors have found al-Attas' works 'reliable' enough to be cited positively as argumentative (Drewes), factual (Gordon) and indicative (Manguin) support.[4]

It would seem that Farish Noor himself is 'tainted' by the very practice of 'vilifying' and 'condemning' he none too subtly imputes to al-Attas (and to all whom he considers to be 'other' than his 'Other').

But to be considerate, Farish Noor, most probably, is in need of spending more time weeding his own backyard. Hopefully he may find this unsolicited revisit going a long way toward lightening his unenviable task.

Farish Noor and al-Attas

To his credit, Farish cares enough to describe briefly two of al-Attas' works as cases in point, namely, Preliminary Statement and Islam and Secularism , mainly in his Endnotes.

As to the former book, by restricting himself to noting al-Attas' conclusions that 'the coming of Islam ... was the most momentous event in the history of the Archipelago', that the influence of Hinduism was more aesthetic than philosophical, etc., Farish has chosen to ignore the documentary and methodological bases upon which those conclusions were arrived at, as if the propensity for grounding theories and interpretations in 'etymological roots' and 'close readings of early Malay and Indonesian Muslim texts, social rituals and rites' was exclusive to the straightforward orientalism of Kern and associates.[5]

One might suppose that Farish, like al-Attas, has found the time and expertise to check for himself how 'accurate and close' those readings were.

Yes, close readings, but of which texts, to fit what conceptual framework, to draw what image, for what practical purposes and for whose benefit?

This self-restriction explains his happy-go-lucky habit of closely reading fancy, self-imagined, semi-sociopolitical notions such as 'reversed [sic] Orientalism,' 'radical break,' 'agenda-setting', 'hegemonic and static discourses', 'essentialism', 'oppositional dialectics', etc., into, out of, or around al-Attas and 'many contemporary Islamist scholars', whom, by the way, he habitually doesn't really care enough about to cite in any informative detail.

Just come to think of it, wouldn't 'reversed [sic] orientalism' - i.e., occidentalism/inverse orientalism? - be more descriptive of the latter book, Islam and Secularism , rather than of the former?

So, how can we be assured that this habit of imaginative misreading has not boiled over into the characterization of non-'Islamist' works he so 'wonderfully' lauds? Answer: by nothing less than doing your own fieldwork and combing the library yourself. If so, we might as well write for ourselves, thanks but no thanks.

That such notions may be either 'apparent' or 'implicit' in 'Islamist' works shouldn't be too problematic for a sophisticated liberal columnist like Farish Noor. The real intellectual challenge here is to show to the less informed whether or not these notions are coherently inferable from or incongruently imposed on historical and modern realities.

But going by the breezy, obscurantist style to which Farish Noor is addicted, meeting such a substantial challenge will have to be the lot of intellectuals more predisposed toward perceiving and representing the truth.

Many eminent well-tested revisionists (most of them very European or Anglo-American) in various fields like George G M James, Rachel Carson, Noam Chomsky, Anwar Abdel Malek, A. L Tibawi, Nabia Abbot, Theodore Roszak, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, Marshall Hodgson, E. F. Schumacher, Walter Burkert, Edward Said, Samir Amin, J M Blaut, Martin Bernal, Gilbert Rist, Serge Latouche, Janet Abu-Lughod have helped to put much of Western scholarship where they properly belong - the trash bin - and so, just exactly who is doing most of the rejecting of the 'Western canon'?

Farish Noor will be doing himself and his discerning readers a great favour by emulating these names and to do a little bit more homework if he really wants to shake-up and revise the intellectual and socio-political status quo and bring into 'public discourse' and 'collective memory' whatever occurs to his fertile mind to be lumpable into his all-encompassing 'Other' Malaysia that serves as an alternative to the present.

But must it be said that such a reasonable homework would be too much to demand of a doctor of (contemporary?) political science whose 'decision' to join in the Islamisation 'fray' was thus far put off due to 'lack of reliable material and resources' only now ameliorated by that 'timely' and 'fortunate' MSRI volume.

One only has to peep into that volume's learned notes and bibliographies and those of al-Attas' many works to learn that this debilitating 'lack' has more to do with a subjective poverty of cognitive industry than with any objective scarcity of secondary, tertiary or even original sources. So, fools, hastily 'armed' with a volume or two, may, if they have nothing better to do, rush into where erudite sages fear to tread, or tread very, very carefully indeed.

Islam and Secularism

As for Islam and Secularism , Farish Noor has deemed it unnecessary to point out that (far from being 'caricatural' and 'simplistic') much of al-Attas' 'reading of Secularism' is coherently derived from what the Western intellectuals themselves have diagnosed as the 'crisis of secularisation' that has engulfed the West, both socially and philosophically, and which is now engulfing the rest of the world, including the Muslim world, due to their being physically and, especially, intellectually captivated by global Western hegemony.

Farish Noor completely obscures from his readers the fact that al-Attas has entitled the second chapter, 'Secular-Secularisation-Secularism,' to engage critically the West's very own definitions and understanding of these terms, and to argue that it is 'secularisationism' in the sense of 'secular historical relativism' that is diametrically opposed to the Islamic view of truth and reality.

Such conceptual subtleties, reflective of the complexities of the long historical twists and turns of the peculiarly Western philosophico-religous experience, could hardly have been 'invented to impair the faith and culture of the Muslims'. As for 'dichotomy', it might interest 'moderate' political scientists to learn that for al-Attas, "... since Islam does not involve itself in the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane ... an Islamic state is neither wholly theoratic nor wholly secular."[6]

Could it be that such subtleties are beyond the ken of Farish Noor's myopic vision, and thus he takes recourse to 'inventing' in their place things he fails to perceive.

Again, for those who truly care enough to 'decide to join in the fray', it's best to bypass Farish Noor altogether and to read al-Attas' (and Kern's and Alijah's) own words in their own un- 'tainted' context.

MSRI, al-Attas and the Orientalist

To set the factual record straight, one of the earliest learned monographs published by the MSRI was al-Attas' Some Aspects of Sufism as Understood and Practised among the Malays (Singapore, 1963).

It was on the basis of this work that he was invited to further his studies at McGill, that hotbed of virulent Orientalism. In glaring contrast to Farish, it seems that 'eurocentric' orientalists, despite themselves, are possessed of at least a modicum of intellectual self-respect and a candid sense of fairplay to recognise the academic merit of al-Attas' works, however much they may disagree with him.

At most, whenever smitten they may choose to ignore him, as Drewes and Gordon [7] have done in the case of his very technically detailed solution to the riddle of The Correct Date of the Trengganu Inscription , published way back in 1970, [8] when revisionism and the revisionists had yet to find their rightful listing in the fashionable vocabulary of contemporary language games.

And true to his military code of honourable face to face, hand to hand combat, al-Attas reciprocates in kind and some too. Far from 'simplifying' and 'caricaturing' the West, and 'rejecting' it in toto as 'the Other' (apparently Farish's overstretched 'key concept' plucked from Edward Said's Orientalism ) from a safe distance, al-Attas looks at them in the eye without blinking.

He makes it a primal rule to argue against them (even for some of them) closely, minute point for minute point, both empirically and logically. This combative courage befitting a truly creative and authoritative intellectual would be self-evident to any who cares enough to read any one of his numerous works, say The Correct Date of the Terengganu Inscription (1970), and, especially, Comments on the Re-examination of al-Raniri's Hujjatu'l-Siddiq: A Refutation (1975).

Al-Attas pulls no punches nor hides timidly behind a facade of cheap journalistic diatribes masquerading as learned judgements calculatively aimed for the consumption of a public audience presumed to be gullible enough not to think of checking the facts (and the persons concerned) for themselves.

I should think that our (true) information-starved reading public deserves a much better deal from those making a quick (and comfortable?) living out of writing, even mechanical scribling on every conceivable topic under the cloudy Malaysian skies for a weekly column.

Language Game

Farish Noor would dabble in language games while failing miserably to catch the semantical implication of Kern's observation that Malay has become the 'common language' of Muslims of diverse ethnic groups, Buginese, Sulunese, Javanese, etc., and so 'Malay is synonymous with Muslim'.

And so, whatever the original paganistic Sanskrit contents of terms like Dewata Mulia Raya and sembahyang , their semantic structures (i.e., meanings) have been transformed while their phonetic morphology (i.e., sounds) is retained.

These Malay terms now denote meanings that are technically 'synonymous' with the Muslim Allah Ta'ala and solat , thus Kern's characterisation of the Malay ruler's 'knowing' use of 'Malay-ised words and expressions' such as Dewata Mulia Raya and tuhan as 'inverted purism'- i.e., purified of all paganistic connotations, hence Islamised.

This observation is perfectly in line with al-Attas' view of the Islamisation of the Malay language. [9]

Farish Noor himself can think of many other examples: tuhan , syurga , neraka , agama , puasa , pesuruh , etc., unless of course he still suffers from those semantic hangovers from paganistic times whenever he utters these words.

Furthermore, it is simply false for Farish Noor to insinuate that Kern '... has cared to point out that the inscription itself does not mention the word Allah'. Kern makes no such stupid claim.

As a matter of fact, the term Rasulullah ( Rasul Allah ) is retained without translation at all into, for instance, Pesuruh ( Utusan , Duta , etc.) Dewata Mulia Raya .

Worse, apparently Farish fails to check the original inscription (in the Muzium Negara), assuming he can even find it intelligible. So much for his being 'armed' with 'reliable material and resources' for 'joining in the fray'.

Obviously, Farish Noor has no right whatsoever to be speaking for Kern or the MSRI, much less for or against Islamisation ('moderate' or otherwise). As for other numerous inaccuracies and misleading imputations in Farish Noor's self-appointed patronage of Kern, I have to leave it to other discerning revisitors to exhaust them in better detail. (Pointer: does Kern actually talk about 'the etymological roots ... of key concepts ... like kuasa ... sakti ... derhaka ," etc?

Farish gives no reference here, and the MSRI collection of Kern's articles is on the whole less socio-philological than ethno-geographical in nature).

Among others, this impromptu revisit has also dug up one most disturbing fact about Farish Noor, namely, that he thinks nothing of blatantly committing the unforgivable moral-intellectual crime of imputing his own words, notions, views and 'agenda-setting' to Kern and al-Attas (and God knows who else Farish has fancied to abuse). Doesn't he even respect the ethical decorum and intellectual sanity of his loyal readers?

Revisionists, Revisionism, Revisionist movement

If al-Attas' Preliminary Statement was really published in '1963' (sic; in 1969 to be 'accurate'), what has he to do with Edward Said's 1978 book, Orientalism ?

Instead of being influenced by Said to take up 'reversed orientalism', it is more than likely that al-Attas, along with Chomsky, Anwar Abdel Malek, Kuhn and Hodgson, was among the pioneers of revisionist scholarship, and Said the fruit of it. Indeed, Said's thesis is a rather late elaboration of Anwar Abdel Malek's very early 'Orientalism in Crisis," Diogenes 44 (Winter 1963).

Be that as it may, it needs to be noted that to be a revisionist, one does not have to believe in revisionism, just as being a scientist is far from being a believer in scientism, or a Marxist in Marxism.

If certain things don't seem to tally up, any self-respecting scholar would take another look at the received viewpoint and search out the evidence or lack of it upon which it is based, and perhaps propose an alternative one.

Thus the rise of pioneering and incisively critical scholars constituting what might be called the Revisionist Movement during the decade between the late 50s and 60s. It is certainly in the spirit of this re-visioning that later scholars like I Wallerstein, Edward Said, Samir Amin and Martin Bernal draw the attention of the world's intellectuals to the often unconscious Eurocentrism, even Hellenocentrism in Western scholarship (e.g., W. H. McNeill's 'human' history, The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1963).

To be sure, there have been bad imitation revisionist works taking place as an 'unintended' consequence, both by 'non-European' and European scholars, but one has to trust the cognitive capacity of serious students to sift grain from sand.

The intellectual purpose of the work of authoritative revisionists is to 'puncture' dogmatic academic 'complacencies', [10] to free the mind from the tyranny of unexamined 'agenda', and therefore to render the truth accessible once again to the universal creative imagination of the East and West.

Thus, the motivation behind the inverse orientalism of Edward Said observing the Occident observing the (Muslim) Orient, of al-Attas' observing the West observing both itself and the East, of A G Frank's replacement of Hellenoeurocentrism with Afroeurasiocentrism, of Marshall Hodgson's impassioned argument for a worldcentric/humanocentric world history, [11] and of Serge Latouche's spirited call for 'authentic dialogue among cultures'.[12]

Similar effort has also been going on in the natural sciences, such as in cosmophysics, biology and psycholinguistics, as exemplified in the works of G. F. R. Ellis, Michael Denton, M. J. Behe, John Eccles, Noam Chomsky and Ray Jackendoff. [13]

I sincerely believe that both the moral and intellectual fibre of the Malaysian reading public can be greatly enhanced if simple but not 'simplistic' weekly columns are devoted to brief critical surveys of these truly inspiring, creative works. But I guess such a worthwhile task will be asking too much of Farish Noor. Any other volunteers?

Endnotes:

[1] "The Other Malaysia: Sex and the Asian woman," Malaysiakini.com (September 23--24, 2000).

[2] Otherwise indicated, all quotations cited from this piece.

[3] See note 1.

[4] Edited and annotated by Alijah Gordon (Kuala Lumpur: MSRI, 2001), 153, 246, 318.

[5] Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago (Kuala Lumpur: DBP, 1969), 1--3, 33--35, for al-Attas's methods and documentary sources.

[6] (Kuala Lumpur: ABIM, 1978). Revised edition (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993), 15--49 passim for the relevant details.

[7] Propagation , 91n33, 92n34 and 143--144 respectively.

[8] (Kuala Lumpur: National Musuem), where al-Attas engages closely the likes of H. S. Paterson, C. O. Blagden and G. W. J. Drewes.

[9] Kern, Propagation , 36, 70; al-Attas, Preliminary Statement , 22, 27--28; Islam and Secularism, 177--78; and Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, The Educational Philosophy and Practice of Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas: An Exposition of the Original Concept of Islamization (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1998), 297--98, 368--69, 415--22, for the relevant discussions.

[10] Patrick Seale, The Observer , outside back cover of Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).

[11] Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam and World History , ed. E. Burke III (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

[12] The Westernization of the World; The Significance, Scope and Limits of the Drive towards Global Uniformity, trans. Rosemary Morris (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1996).

[13] Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).

(The writer is a Research Fellow (History & Philosophy of Science) at the International Institute of Islamic Thought & Civilization (Istac), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and can be reached at [email protected].