Humans need their own 'science' ( Part 1 )

Last month, I visited the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) as my friend Syafiq Shafie had asked me to join him to meet with few lecturers there. I have been very impressed since long time ago I heard about ISTAC, but never had the chance to visit it.

Briefly, this center offers master and doctoral degrees in Islamic and other civilizations, philosophy, ethics and contemporary issues, Islamic spiritual culture and contemporary society, Muslim world issues and their respective sub-areas. It is officially under International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM) administration.

ISTAC Library

According to Syafiq, ISTAC had achieved its glorious era when it operated in Damansara ( its first premiss ) before transferred to permanent building in 2006 at Jalan Duta. People said that the cost for ISTAC new building can build ‘another’ IIUM. Not surprisingly, entering this center make people feel as they are not in Malaysia and not being in 21th era. It seems a Europe classical castle. Every step you walk, there is ‘odd’ decoration with  its own significance. All of these are form Naqqied Al-Attas's idea as he was the founder for this center.

Why Al-Attas is not be there? There are many rumors about it, but I should not write about it as I do not know the truth. But by far the most important is how we have built the greatest building without 'human' environment? According to internal source, the number of students in recent year has declined significantly.

Great library without students?

Why ignoring Human Science?

A commonly held belief is that human science fields are not important as empirical science. They argue that modern societies are not affected by these studies compared to technology and science field that nowadays are playing more important role in human life.

As the result, not surprisingly, when the government does not spend much subsidies or sponsorship to invest human science development via higher education. A very good example here is most of the sponsorship students to foreign countries are in the medical field, engineering, IT and economics.

Likewise, most of common people prefer to determine their children became an engineer, doctor, accountant compared to born a historian, sociologist or philosopher. Even their children show their interest and talent in human science field, they will not nurture them.

A number of reasons have been put forward for this phenomena, but by far the most important I see is cause of ‘materialistic’ outlook. The government or company would not spend their money for investing human science students, unless they got back their harvest. Moreover, after become the expert, they may criticize the government policies. Thus, they look sponsoring human science students are not reaping many benefits.

While the society, they need to guarantee their children's career as they must be independent after graduate, easy to get the job and life with higher salaries. They could not imagine how a graduate from history faculty can survive their future.

To be continue...