The religious, the plural, the secular and the modern: a brief critical survey on Islam in Malaysia

Abstract

The embedization of Islam in Malaysia has gone through a long and complex process that involved an interaction with three major world civilizations (Indian, Chinese and European) and two colonial systems (Dutch and British) during which many aspects of its practices were reconfigured. This paper provides a brief critical survey of the evolution of the said embedization process during which Islam and the Muslims in Malaysia were moulded by a series of sociological realities, namely plural society, secularism and modernity. This has resulted, we argue, in the creation of 'moderate' Islam in Malaysia, one that is quite different from the fundamentalist image of Islam profiled in the contemporary worldwide discourse on global Islam