Harun Nasution

Who is Harun Nasution?

Harun Nasution was an Indonesian scholar who described himself as a neo-Mutazilite, a modern follower of the medieval movement of the Mutazila. His work was part of a small but significant trend within Islamic thought to champion rationalist and humanist principles.

Nasution spent much of his youth outside of Indonesia, living in Arabia and Egypt before moving to Europe and eventually Canada. His father had been a traditional religious scholar, who despite his own immersion in Arabic and Islamic culture sent his son to a Dutch primary school. Nasution did, however, attend an Islamic secondary school, although one that taught secular as well as religious subjects. After an unhappy period of further study in Mecca, he went to Egypt, where he attended lectures at al-Azhar University in Cairo. In 1962 he began studying at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University in Montreal. His doctoral studies were on the theology of Muhammad Abduh, focusing on the extent to which Abduh had been influenced by Mu'tazila teachings. Nasution completed his PhD in 1969 and then returned to Indonesia, where he took up a position at IAIN in Jakarta.