A Tribute to ISTAC

ISTAC is instrumental in nurturing my intellectual growth - the institution, the program and most importantly the curriculum have taught me to look at many things from a different perspective. Now that I am finally it's alumni, here's a sharing about ISTAC by one of its international professors.

"The fame of ISTAC and the name of its director had spread in the late 20th century not only in Malaysia and the rest of the Islamic world, but throughout the whole world, wherever there were universities with a department devoted to the study of the Islamic world, past and present......It was like working at a university and at the same time it was not like an ordinary university. Students and lecturers came from all parts of the world, so the condition for an 'exchange of cultures' were present. The teaching was at the graduate level and all students had the interest and capacity to pass their exams at this level, some of them continuing for the doctorate degree.

The subjects of teaching and research covered the whole range of Islamic studies. It comprised the traditional Islamic subjects such as a study of Qur'an, hadith and fiqh, theology, logic and philosophy; it also comprised the history of Muslim thought in the fields of science, medicine, psychology, history, economics and politics, until the present time. In this way the program was a continuation of a 14-centuries-old tradition of Islamic intellectual life. On the other hand, the program also intended to give the student an outlook on the ways of thinking in the modern world, so that they would be able to take their position and function well in the 'global civilization' of the present time. Therefore, subjects were taught such as the history of Western philosophy and science, and the religion and civilizations of the Eastern, non-Muslim countries.

In order to be able to study the sources of all this learning and to do research in this variety of fields, knowledge of Arabic language is necessary, while other languages are also needed, depending on the field of civilization, such as Persian, Greek, Latin, French and German. ISTAC offered the opportunity to study these languages.

An institute of teaching and research cannot function without a library. In fact, the library of ISTAC contains almost everything a or scholar in Islamic studies needs...and even more than that. Its collection of books and journals in this field is outstanding and unique, and by far the best in Southeast Asia......

Thus, one may safely say that the level and the range of teachimg and research, and the sources in the library of ISTAC could be compared to that of any high ranking university in the world....." (P. Lettinck," Science in Adab Literature," in Knowledge, Language, Thought and Civilization of Islam ed. by Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud and Muhammad Zaini Uthman Skudai, JB: UTM, 2010), 297-298.

That much sharing maybe sufficient for anyone of interest.