Islam in Malaysia

Islam in Malaysia
Author: Syed Muhd. Khairudin Aljunied
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2019
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190925191

This book surveys the growth and development of Islam in Malaysia from the eleventh to the twenty-first century, investigating how Islam has shaped the social lives, languages, cultures and politics of both Muslims and non-Muslims in one of the most populous Muslim regions in the world. Khairudin Aljunied shows how Muslims in Malaysia built upon the legacy of their pre-Islamic past while benefiting from Islamic ideas, values, and networks to found flourishing states and societies that have played an influential role in a globalizing world. He examines the movement of ideas, peoples, goods, technologies, arts, and cultures across into and out of Malaysia over the centuries. Interactions between Muslims and the local Malay population began as early as the eighth century, sustained by trade and the agency of Sufi as well as Arab, Indian, Persian, and Chinese scholars and missionaries. Aljunied looks at how Malay states and societies survived under colonial regimes that heightened racial and religious divisions, and how Muslims responded through violence as well as reformist movements. Although there have been tensions and skirmishes between Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia, they have learned in the main to co-exist harmoniously, creating a society comprising of a variety of distinct populations. This is the first book to provide a seamless account of the millennium-old venture of Islam in Malaysia.

Islam and Popular Culture in Indonesia and Malaysia

Islam and Popular Culture in Indonesia and Malaysia
Author: Andrew N. Weintraub
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2011-04-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136812296

Islam is a religion but there are also popular cultures of Islam that are mass mediated, commercialized, pleasure-filled, humorous, and representative of large segments of society. This book illuminates how Muslims (and non-Muslims) in Indonesia and Malaysia make sense of their lives within an increasingly pervasive, popular culture of Islamic images, texts, film, songs, and narratives.

Mahathir’s Islam

Mahathir’s Islam
Author: Sven Schottmann
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2018-09-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824876474

Mahathir Mohamad’s legacy as Malaysia’s longest serving prime minister (1981–2003) is deeply controversial. His engagement with Islam, the religion of just over half Malaysia’s population, has often been dismissed as partisan maneuvering. Yet his willingness to countenance a more prominent place for Islam in government and society is what distinguished him from other modernist politicians, and his instinct to set Malaysian politics against the backdrop of the wider Muslim world was politically astute. Author Sven Schottmann argues that Mahathir’s transformative effect on Malaysia can only be fully appreciated if we also take him seriously as one of the postcolonial Muslim world’s most significant political thought leaders. Schottmann sees Mahathir’s representations of Islam as a relatively coherent discourse that can legitimately be described as “Mahathir’s Islam.” This discourse contains Mahathir’s assessment of the economic, political, and sociocultural problems facing the contemporary Muslim world and the range of solutions and corrective measures that he proposed Muslims should adopt. His ideas are fraught with flaws and contradictions. On the one hand, he emphasized the individualistic, egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic, and dynamic qualities of Islam. On the other, his government enacted legislation and acquiesced in the activities of religious bodies that curtailed religious freedoms of both Muslims and non-Muslims. His ideas contributed to Malaysia’s worsening state of interethnic relations, yet his insistence that every Muslim had the right to speak for Islam may have, paradoxically, prepared the ground for a future democratization of Malaysian politics. Mahathir’s Islam is based on rigorous analysis of Mahathir’s speeches, interviews, and writings, which the author is able to link to parallel processes elsewhere in the Muslim world—Indonesia, the Middle East, Pakistan, Turkey, and diaspora communities in the West. Mahathir’s Islamic discourse, Schottmann suggests, must be read against the wider late twentieth-century resurgence of religion in general, and the post-1970s Islamic revival in particular. Balanced in approach and engagingly written, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of political science, religious studies, and others interested in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, or Mahathir himself.

Malay Muslims

Malay Muslims
Author: Robert Day McAmis
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2002-07-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780802849458

McAmis also gives attention to the history of their relationship with Christians - a history that is key to understanding the current state of religious and social life in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Since Muslims and Christians together comprise ninety-four percent of the Malay population, peaceful interaction and cooperation between mosque and church are crucial to realizing the economic and political goals of the entire region.".

Islam and Religious Expression in Malaysia

Islam and Religious Expression in Malaysia
Author: Azizuddin Mohd Sani
Publisher:
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2020-06-29
Genre:
ISBN: 9789814881357

This book attempts to analyse the concept of religious expression vis-à-vis freedom of speech in Malaysia from the philosophical, political and theoretical perspectives. It begins by discussing the major sources of religious expression that are firmly rooted in the societal and religious beliefs, constitution and legislation of the country. It also examines multiple facets of the Islamization policy in the country and to what extent such policy affects the exercise of domestic religious expression. The problems and challenges of domestic religious expression, theoretically and practically, will also be examined including the issues of radicalization and terrorism. After a change of power from the Barisan Nasional (BN) to Pakatan Harapan (PH) in 2018, this book attempts to explain PH's approach in dealing with the issue of Islam and religious expression in Malaysia. Lastly, this book intends to identify and observe how Malaysian society and the state react to the issue of religious expression. "Prof. Azizuddin makes an eloquent case for robust freedom of expression that is consistent with Malaysian conditions. This is a most welcome and important book that could and should have a major impact. It is a timely and thoughtful examination of the complex and serious issue of Islam vis-à-vis religious expression in Malaysia. It also illustrates the transition from the restrictive-stability approach of the Barisan Nasional administration to an open-freedom approach of the Pakatan Harapan government." -- Dato' Saifuddin Abdullah, Minister of Communications and Multimedia, Malaysia "Racial and religious hatred are examples of the many difficulties to which freedom of expression can give rise. These difficulties are likely to be especially serious in multicultural and multireligious societies, such as Malaysia. In such contexts there is a need to weigh the importance of freedom of expression for an effective democracy against the need to maintain social order and the conditions of political civility that are also essential to democratic dialogue. This is the challenge that Prof. Azizuddin addresses in his ambitious new book." -- John Horton, Emeritus Professor of Politics, Keele University, United Kingdom "This important book is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the nexus between rights and religion in Malaysia. Not only does it trace the contestation over religious expression, it also provides a valuable analysis of the expansion of the religious bureaucracy and the underlying and changing cultural responses of the Malay community to the new political terrain." -- Bridget Welsh, Honorary Research Associate, University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute Malaysia (UoNARI-M)

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty
Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2011-07-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0393081974

“A delightfully original take on…the prospects for liberal democracy in the broader Islamic Middle East.”—Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.

Islam, Politics and Youth in Malaysia

Islam, Politics and Youth in Malaysia
Author: Dominik M. Mueller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2014-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317912985

Providing an ethnographic account of the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) and its Youth Wing (Dewan Pemuda PAS), this book analyses the genesis and role of Islamic movements in terms of their engagement in mainstream politics. It explores the party’s changing approach towards popular culture and critically investigates whether the narrative of a post-Islamist turn can be applied to the PAS Youth. The book shows that in contrast to the assumption that Islamic marketization and post-Islamism are reinforcing each other, the PAS Youth has strategically appropriated and integrated Islamic consumerism to pursue a decidedly Islamist – or ‘pop-Islamist’ – political agenda. The media-savvy PAS Youth elites, which are at the forefront of implementing new outreach strategies for the party, categorically oppose tendencies of political moderation among the senior party. Instead, they are most passionately calling for the establishment of a Syariah-based Islamic oder for state and society, although these renewed calls are increasingly expressed through modern channels such as Facebook, YouTube, rock music, celebrity advertising, branded commodities and other market-driven forms of social movement mobilization. A timely and significant contribution to the literature on Islam and politics in Malaysia and beyond, this book sheds new light on widespread assumptions or even hopes of "post-Islamism". It is of interest to students and scholars of Political Religion and Southeast Asian Politics.

Constituting Religion

Constituting Religion
Author: Tamir Moustafa
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-07-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108334075

Most Muslim-majority countries have legal systems that enshrine both Islam and liberal rights. While not necessarily at odds, these dual commitments nonetheless provide legal and symbolic resources for activists to advance contending visions for their states and societies. Using the case study of Malaysia, Constituting Religion examines how these legal arrangements enable litigation and feed the construction of a 'rights-versus-rites binary' in law, politics, and the popular imagination. By drawing on extensive primary source material and tracing controversial cases from the court of law to the court of public opinion, this study theorizes the 'judicialization of religion' and the radiating effects of courts on popular legal and religious consciousness. The book documents how legal institutions catalyze ideological struggles, which stand to redefine the nation and its politics. Probing the links between legal pluralism, social movements, secularism, and political Islamism, Constituting Religion sheds new light on the confluence of law, religion, politics, and society. This title is also available as Open Access.

Islamic Modern

Islamic Modern
Author: Michael G. Peletz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2002-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780691095080

PART ONE. THE CULTURE, POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND HISTORY OF THE ISLAMIC COURTS -- Locating Islamic Magistrates and Their Courts in History -- The Work of the Courts -- Litigant Strategies and Patterns of Resistance -- PART TWO. MODERNITY AND GOVERNMENTALITY IN ISLAMIC COURTS AND OTHER DOMAINS -- Reinscribing Authenticity and Identity -- Producing Good Subjects, "Asian Values," and New Types of Criminality.

Islamic Law in Malaysia

Islamic Law in Malaysia
Author: Adnan Trakic
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-03-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9813361875

This book examines the challenges of the implementation of Islamic law in Malaysia. Malaysia is a pertinent jurisdiction to explore such challenges given its global focus, colonial history and institutions, and the intersection of the Shari’ah and secularism/multiculturalism. The resultant implementation challenges are underpinned by three factors that make Malaysia an important jurisdiction for those interested in understanding the place of Islamic law in the global context. First, Malaysia is often considered as a model Islamic country. Islamic law is a source of law in Malaysia. The Islamic law legal system in Malaysia operates in parallel with a common law legal system. The two systems of law generally are in harmony with one another. Nevertheless, occasional cross-jurisdictional issues do arise, and when they do, the Malaysian judiciary has been quite efficient in solving them. The Malaysian experience in maintaining such harmony between the two legal systems provides lessons for a number of countries facing such challenges. Second, Malaysia has a developed Shari’ah court system that interprets and applies Islamic law predominantly based on the Shafi’i school of thought. While, for the most part, the approach has been successful, there have been times when the implementation of the law has raised concerns as to the compatibility of Islamic law with modern principles of human rights and common law-based values. Third, there have been cases where Islamic law implementation in Malaysia has gained global attention due to the potential for wider international implications. To do justice to this complex area, the book calls on scholars and practitioners who have the necessary expertise in Islamic law and its implementation. As such, this book provides lessons and direction for other countries that operate a dual system of secular and Islamic laws.