The Muslim Dilemma Chapter 1 Summary

In the book, the author managed to elaborate the subject comprehensively based on specific references, the history and development of the subject, and also provided solutions to overcome the problem stated in the book. In this book he includes the real problems and provides original solutions to overcome it. The chapters that have been taking in the books are ‘The Contemporary Western Christian Background’ in Chapter 1, ‘secularism’ in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 Islam: The Concept of Religion and The Foundation of Ethics and Morality.The Muslim Dilemma and last but not least Chapter entitled includes The Dewesternization of Knowledge.
Prof Al-Attas starting to develop his idea book by introducing the history of the development in the first chapter,

He also points out that the decline of Muslim civilization is not due to its internal structure like where the governments are corrupted but due to the loss of adab among Muslims. Loss of adab means the loss of respect for important things such as ilm’, which we can see how important as Allah taught Muhammad “to Read” through angel of Jibril. The dilemma of Muslims today is that most of them are likely to copy and duplicate. They should be revolutionizing and developing new ideas which suits Islamic teachings and engaging in critical creative analysis and judgment.
Finally, the author ends the book with solutions in the final chapter – The Dewesternization of Knowledge. He stated that the knowledge must be examine or inspect closely and thoroughly in order to remove the elements of secularism. He declares that to solve the issues of the Ummah is to dewesternize and Islamize knowledge through the establishment of Islamic universities. All chapters that have been highlighted by al-Attas are very comprehensive and related with one another. Indeed, he also provides the solutions to covers all of the problems