Syed Hussein Alatas (1928-2007); Wise Muslim Rationalist, Culturally Grounded Cosmopolitan

The late Prof. Syed Hussein Alatas, this tribute originally offered at a memorial event held shortly after his death suggests, was an exemplar of Islamic rationalism and a pioneer of the project ofu cultural enlightenment (keserlahan) in modern Nusantara (Southeast Asia). He was a Malay-world champion of ((the party of humanity, human inclusiveness and mutual cultural accommodation based upon the universal human, if ultimately divinely bestowed, attribute of reason. He was a committed upholder of the principle of tauhid (unity): the unity of faith and reason, of thinking and doing, of ethics and critical thought, and on that basis of all humankind under the one universal God and, in its varying cultural and historic forms, the one divine moral law. He was an implacable opponent ofbebalisma (doltishness): not a natural but a studied and assiduously cultivated stupidity, and an entire culture of thick- headedness, that is particularly prevalent among mindless politicians and the recognition-hungry would-be intellectuals and academicians who are happily drawn into their orbit of mundane power-seeking.