{"id":1169,"date":"2013-07-27T14:19:31","date_gmt":"2013-07-27T06:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2014-05-01T13:35:48","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T05:35:48","slug":"summary-of-the-inaugural-professorial-lecture-by-prof-wan-mohd-nor-wan-daud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/blog\/2013\/07\/27\/summary-of-the-inaugural-professorial-lecture-by-prof-wan-mohd-nor-wan-daud\/","title":{"rendered":"Summary of the Inaugural Professorial Lecture by Prof Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe 26th<\/sup> of June, 2013 marked the first time that the Professorial Inaugural Lecture Series was held in the Kuala Lumpur campus of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and the turn-out was spectacular indeed.\u00a0 Prof. Dr. Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud delivered his Professorial Inaugural Lecture Series before an audience of approximately 500 people, including several dignitaries, government officials, UTM professors and students as well as representatives from various institutions of higher learning.\u00a0 Prof. Dr. Wan Mohd. Nor Wan Daud, a scholar of high-calibre, is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Islam, Science and Civilisation (CASIS) at UTM.\n<\/p>\n

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\nFor the 44th<\/sup> lecture in this series, Prof. Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud entitled his monograph \u201cIslamization of Contemporary Knowledge and the Role of the University in the Context of De-Westernization and Decolonization\u201d. \u00a0\u00a0The event was moderated by Prof Dato\u2019 Dr. Aziuddin Ahmad who was a former rector of Kolej Universiti Islam Selangor (KUIS), and a member of the Board of Governors for Putra Business School. \u00a0Prof. Dato\u2019 Aziuddin introduced the lecture by describing the man of adab<\/em> in three words: \u201csubliminal, seminal and sufistic.\u201d\u00a0 Prior to Prof Wan Mohd. Nor\u2019s speech, he was introduced by Prof Dr. Rose Alinda Alias, Deputy Vice Chancellor of UTM\u2019s Academic and International Division.
\n\"\"<\/a>In his lecture, Prof. Wan Mohd. Nor highlighted the strategic importance of higher education for personal and societal well-being and development.\u00a0 Aside from being an effective vehicle for progress, higher education has also played a role in the \u201cstruggle for world supremacy\u201d as evidenced from the hegemony of Western powers.\u00a0 Prof. Wan, as he is warmly referred to by students, noted that Arab countries for the most part are extremely receptive to Western universities setting up sister campuses in their countries despite their oppositions to the foreign policies of the US and other states.\u00a0 Citing authors that represent the cases in China and Africa, Prof Wan warned about the colonizing impact of higher education where Western cultural and intellectual dependency is perpetuated.\n<\/p>\n

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\nProf Wan stressed the importance of Islamization and de-Westernization in order to break the dependency on Western present-day knowledge. He cited Turkey and Malaysia as two model Muslim nations that project a \u201cmoderate form of religious modernity\u201d stemming from their reliance on their \u201cown system of thought\u201d, quoting Fethullah Gulen.\u00a0\u00a0 Islamization is not a reactionary idea; in fact, \u201cthe actual practice of Islamizing knowledge began with the first Revelation and this effort is continuously implemented by various Muslim scholars centuries after the Prophet Muhammad.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Prof Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud quoted Tan Sri Prof. Muhammad Naquib al-Attas\u2019s definition of Islamization as \u201cthe liberation of man first from magical, mythological, animistic, national-cultural tradition, and then from secular control over his reason and his language.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nProf Wan Mohd Nor defined the de-Westernization and Islamization of present-day knowledge as the \u201cdual process of isolating and removing these un-Islamic, Western elements and concepts, and simultaneously infuse them with key Islamic elements and concepts projecting the worldview, ethical framework and legal principles of Islam.\u201d\u00a0 This process applies to the human sciences as well as natural, physical and applied sciences. \u00a0Islamization is a process that Prof Wan Mohd Nor calls \u201cdynamic stabilism\u201d, which prevents it from being liberal in assimilating un-Islamic concepts, yet it is not so conservative so as to deprive Muslims from \u201cbenefitting from contemporary scientific, intellectual and cultural developments.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nTo implement Islamization and to uphold \u201cdynamic stabilism\u201d requires consistent and ambitious endeavors that extent beyond the writing of textbooks, reforming academic disciplines, and creating or reforming social-cultural and economic institutions. The engine of Islamization should be in perpetual motion in the institutions which articulate the concept of the university in Islam.\u00a0 Here, human beings should be trained to acquire and transmit knowledge that enabled them to return to \u201cMan\u2019s original purpose and nature.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\nIt is impossible to enumerate all the significant ideas that were shared by Prof. Wan Mohd Nor in this summary.\u00a0 However, a copy of his address can be obtained from the Center for Advanced Studies in Islam, Science and Civilisation (CASIS) at UTM, Kuala Lumpur.\n<\/p>\n

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\nBefore reaching the conclusion of the event, the audience was presented with a commentary on Prof. Wan Mohd. Nor\u2019s address by a well-known professor from Istanbul, Turkey, Prof. Dr. Alparslan A\u04abikgen\u04ab who is the Director of graduate studies at Yildiz Technical University.\u00a0 Prof. A\u00e7ikgen\u00e7 illustrated how Prof. Wan managed to shift our focus from a global perspective of this education problem to the micro perspective that focused on the Muslim world.\u00a0\u00a0 According to Prof. A\u00e7ikgen\u00e7, the Muslim world is in need of a \u201csophisticated Islamic philosophy of education that can resolve six main issues, namely individual cultural identity, specifically that of a Muslim individual; collective cultural identity, specifically that of the Muslims who belong to the current Islamic civilization; the role of knowledge in human identity; islamization of the present-day knowledge and finally, the role and strategic significance of the university in dealing with these issues.\n<\/p>\n

\nProf. A\u00e7ikgen\u00e7 conveyed the epistemological context behind the education system that \u201creflect the worldview of the society and culture\u201d.\u00a0 What transpired was an elaboration of systematic concepts that describe the learning process.\u00a0 The challenge for the university is to fathom the concepts that will aid in their realizing the true purpose of education.\u00a0\u00a0 An education pursuit that aims to produce a man of adab (insan adabi<\/em>) is not without insurmountable challenges.\u00a0 Yet, the trait of overcoming challenges is part and parcel of every man of adab <\/em>who has been trained by the university to not only digest and reproduce both information and knowledge, but to exude the scientific attitude that will enable them to succeed as a \u201cuniversal man\u201d, the experts in various fields.\u00a0 Such graduates of universities would be worthy of bearing the responsibility to steer the Islamic civilization to greater heights, by the will of Allah.\n<\/p>\n

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\nclick here<\/a> for the pdf\n<\/p>\n

\nwritten by\n<\/p>\n

\nKhalina Khalili (24\/7\/2013), Ph.D Candidate at CASIS\n<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 26th of June, 2013 marked the first time that the Professorial Inaugural Lecture Series was held in the Kuala Lumpur campus of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and the turn-out was spectacular indeed.\u00a0 Prof. Dr. Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud delivered his Professorial Inaugural Lecture Series before an audience of approximately 500 people, including several […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10796,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-activities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10796"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chancellery.utm.my\/casis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}