Malaysian Scholars Research Articles

A Refutation of a Mosque Serving as a Zakat and Economic Centre During Prophethood

A mosque is a sacred place designated for the exclusive use of the Muslim community. In accordance with Indonesian and Malaysian scholars, mosques during the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) functioned as economic and zakat hubs. This appears to defy the prophetic teaching that prohibits any commercial activity from taking place in a mosque. Therefore, this research will investigate these claims. This study using genetic methodology and assess them based on historical methodology utilising hadith literature. The study’s findings contradict the belief that the mosque served as an economic and zakat distribution (charitable donations) hub during the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). No evidence from hadith or Islamic historical perspective substantiates either of the arguments. The scholars have not found any indication of a report or hadith associating the mosque as a hub for zakat. As for the economy centre, a genetic method revealed that experts had cited a statement indicating that the mosque served as a hub for developing Islamic economic concepts and systems instead of a trading centre. According to several evidence from the hadith, a mosque is more correctly described as a social welfare centre.

Review of Musharakah Islamic Finance Articles in Indonesia-Malaysia Database and Scopus Bibliometrics

Musharakah is an Islamic financing contract. This study analyzed articles on musharakah using bibliometrics and a literature review on articles from Indonesia and Malaysia. While bibliometric analysis of Islamic economics and finance has been previously conducted, it has not been carried out on musharakah in particular. The analysis began by using musharakah as the initial keyword and analyzing other keywords which are part of Islamic economics research from the specified databases. This study found that Indonesian and Malaysian scholars authored many articles on musharakah. Relatively less research on musharakah has been published in Scopus-indexed journals. The earliest articles on musharakah in Scopus-indexed journals were published in 1999. In the past 10 years, musharakah articles in Scopus-indexed journals were authored mainly by Malaysian and Indonesian academics. Keywords: musharakah, bibliography, financing

UNOFFICIAL CULTURAL AMBASSADORS: EXPLORING THE EXPERIENCES AND PERCEPTIONS OF MALAYSIAN STUDENT SCHOLARS IN AMERICA

International educational exchange programmes promote a person’s intellectual development and cultural understanding, which could also foster mutual cooperation and stronger diplomatic ties between countries. Through these programmes, students can socially interact and learn about others from diverse backgrounds. However, the rise of Islamophobia after the September 11 attacks has inculcated the fear of “the Other” and limited the number of Muslim students allowed to study in America, as Muslim culture and religious values are popularly perceived as incompatible with American values and thus viewed as a threat. This study contributes to the literature of diplomacy by highlighting the experiences of sixteen Malaysian scholars sponsored by the Malaysian government and the challenges they experienced during their educational exchange in America. The aim of this qualitative study is to understand the experiences of Malaysian student scholars by identifying: (1) how they initially perceived America; (2) their motivations for wanting to study in America; (3) the challenges they faced; and (4) how their experiences transformed them. The study found that many students faced initial struggles with racism, cultural challenges, and difficulty in achieving cultural assimilation. However, they were able to overcome misperceptions and negative stereotypes. The findings highlight the positive impact of their academic and cultural exchange, its success in reducing divisiveness, and the influence of soft power in strengthening relations between America and Malaysia.

الأربعينات الحديثية في أدبيات ماليزيا

The Forty-Hadith is one of the most famous compilations of hadith books and the most authored and diverse. It shows the great mastery of the hadith scholars in the method of classifying their forties, their conditions, and their contents, and the diversity of their approaches and topics dealt with different purposes. Their creativity in renewing the approach of hadith and its presentation to Muslims generally. Forty hadiths that collect 40 hadiths of our prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, on various topics and purposes. This type of work has a significant place in the Islamic religious culture. This article attempts to brief and contribute in this sector, especially in studying the literature of the 40 Hadith of Malaysian scholars, and the researcher applies the inductive method by collecting the relevant scientific material and describing it briefly. This article shows the abundance of the Forty-Hadith works in Malaysia and the diversity of their content.

Influence of Social Media Platform Trends on Academic anagement and Leadership in Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Review

The growth of influencers in social media with respective delivery topics and their followers' reactions towards leader profiles and characters will lead to some extent to soft skills that can influence the performance of organizations as a whole. However, limited knowledge exists of how it is defined, how it operates, and how it relates to institutional leadership, including both administration and teaching. Therefore, this study aims to review current social media platform trends in Malaysia, the relationship between social media, management, and leadership, as well as how social media trends affect academic leadership and administration. The descriptive content analysis method was applied to examine 1,727 empirical, review, conceptual, and commentary papers published by Scopus and Web of Science journals. After considering other irrelevant information, the authors only reviewed a total of 494 from both websites. Considering Malaysia’s scholars, only 27 were chosen to be reviewed for title and abstract. Of these 27, only three articles were chosen for detailed review. All the information relevant to the research was extracted from each article and analysed using Excel software. Results showed that in 1,727, only three articles were related to social media and Malaysian scholars. According to these three articles, most organizations use Twitter, Instagram, and other digital technologies like digital communications, smartphones, and many others for social interaction. This is because workplace wellbeing can be achieved through human connections on social media. This workplace well-being can be related to leadership and work engagement in organizations. Hashtags in social media, especially Twitter, can be used to express sentiment, and this sentiment can influence human emotional state and well-being. In conclusion, the paper will add to recent efforts on how to improve the current situation, especially for new leaders with prospective approaches to the field, and contribute to the global knowledge base.

Scientific Research and Recent Findings in Financial Monitoring

The article discusses the existing studies on the issue of financial monitoring and the suggestions that their authors have. The discussion of these studies begins with the American scientist Edward Altman's Z-model, which he proposed to predict the risk of bankruptcy for companies. The article presents both an earlier and a modified version of the Z-model developed by Edward Altman. The article also discusses and evaluates the 9-factor model developed by V. Fulmer and R. Saifulin and G. Kadikov's four-factor models. Among the more recent studies in the field of monitoring is the study of the Portuguese scientist Ana Paula Lopez, who found that the companies served by the audiences of the "big four" no longer cheat in the financial part. Malaysian scholars Noor Aisha Nizan and Zuhaikha Zailan found in 2019 that it is best to combine financial audits with technological and human audits. Also, in 2019, Vilnius scientist P. Poshinaus argued that monitoring should be carried out only by economic-mathematical methods, because they provide great opportunities for finding financial irregularities. And in 2020, Czech scientist Aneta Zemankova proposed to the public to use artificial intelligence in monitoring. With its implementation, smart audit procedures and smart contracts can be performed in an automated manner. The authors of the article conclude that the auditors of Georgia, due to the low level of mathematical education, cannot use blockchains and artificial intelligence, but also economic-mathematical models in the audit, and raise the issue of the need to retrain them in this direction. The article discusses the issues of dividing diversified companies into responsibility centers and their financial monitoring. Keywords: Financial monitoring; probability of bankruptcy; Z - model; Fulmer's model; mathematical models; Responsible centers.

Malaysian Disaster Medicine Research: A Bibliographic Study of Publication Trends.

Despite the increasing risks and complexity of disasters, education for Malaysian health care providers in this domain is limited. This study aims to assess scholarly publications by Malaysian scholars on Disaster Medicine (DM)-related topics. An electronic search of five selected journals from 1991 through 2021 utilizing multiple keywords relevant to DM was conducted for review and analysis. A total of 154 articles were included for analysis. The mean number of publications per year from 1991 through 2021 was 5.1 publications. Short reports were the most common research type (53.2%), followed by original research (32.4%) and case reports (12.3%). Mean citations among the included articles were 12.4 citations. Most author collaborations were within the same agency or institution, and there was no correlation between the type of collaboration and the number of citations (P = .942). While a few clusters of scholars could build a strong network across institutions, most research currently conducted in DM was within small, isolated clusters. Disaster Medicine in Malaysia is a growing medical subspecialty with a significant recent surge in research activity, likely due to the SARS-CoV-2/coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic. Since most publications in DM have been on infectious diseases, the need to expand DM-related research on other topics is essential.

Muhammad Natsir: Sumbangannya Terhadap Perjuangan Agama dan Bangsa di Indonesia

This article discusses scholars’ views on Muhammad Natsir’s thoughts. He was one of the prominent political figures and thinkers since the colonial period in Indonesia. As an Indonesia nationalist and political-religious activist, he did not cooperate with the Dutch in pursuit of Indonesia’s independence. Research papers on Natsir’s thoughts and struggles are often penned by local scholars and political-religious writers from that country, including Malaysian authors. This research utilized qualitative approach by conducting analysis through the libraries in Indonesia and Malaysia. Most of the article reviews was conducted through academic study of and general reading on Natsir, especially by Mestika Zed, Deliar Noer and Nurcholis Madjid. Besides that, writing on Natsir’s thoughts and activism was also written by Malaysian scholars such as Anwar Ibrahim, Siddiq Fadhil, Fadhlullah Jamil and Sidek Baba. Hence, the findings of this article attempts to identify the views of these scholars on Natsir’s thoughts and struggles in the political-religious and Indonesian nationalism against the colonial power. This paper also discusses scholars’ views on the contradiction of his political thoughts with Sukarno.

DEVELOPMENT DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE IN MALAYSIA

This article aims to explore the impact of development discourse on the production of social science knowledge in Malaysia since the adoption of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1971. It analyses the nexus between development discourse and the growth of social science themes in Malaysia. This nexus was methodologically tracked using a thematic content study. The paper surveys the articles published by the Akadamika Journal of social science and humanities from 1972-2010 with a special focus on the themes of development discourse in Malaysia. The paper interrogates how the development discourse in Malaysia influences the thematic debates in social science? The findings of the paper revealed four major themes that underpinned the production of social science knowledge in Malaysia. The themes include; (a) Gender and economic development, (b) Climate change and development, (c) State, capital and labour (d) Peasant transformation. The implication of the findings suggests that the Malaysian state’s industrial development significantly influences the formation of debates or construction of social science knowledge by Malaysian scholars. The paper’s findings further showed the potential of social science knowledge in contributing to the development aspirations of the state through a policy coherence between development and values system of the society. The findings also revealed the relevance of social science knowledge in achieving the sustainable development goals on gender equality, economic growth and promotion of sustainable communities in Malaysia.
 Keywords: Development, thematic analysis, knowledge production, Malaysian development, social science

40-YEAR BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF WAQF: ITS CURRENT STATUS AND DEVELOPMENT, AND PATHS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Waqf (Islamic endowment) has received great attention from contemporary scholars, in line with the increasing attention being paid to social welfare. However, it is conceptually unclear, with no consensus having been reached among researchers on its current status. This study provides a brief overview of recent Waqf research developments, hence paving the way for future research. The research employs a bibliometric approach to analysing and summarising the trends and status quo in Waqf growth. Only articles written in English extracted from both the Web of Science and Scopus databases were considered for the study. The paper is an attempt to establish a solid conceptual base and to suggest directions for future research. The research provides a clear picture of the growth of Waqf, and indicates research gaps by reaching comprehensive conclusions about what has been achieved in the field. It hence opens new doors for scholars to develop innovative Waqf models to bridge socioeconomic issues. Our findings show that Indonesian and Malaysian scholars and their educational institutions have had a robust research commitment to the theme of Waqf during the last forty years. However, there is a lack of research on the countries where Waqf was first practised.

The Conceptions of Sharia and Citizenship in Indonesia and Malaysia

Indonesia and Malaysia offer comparative perspectives concerning the relationship between loyalties to the Muslim umma, local ethnicity, and the modern nation-state, and how interpretations of the sharia and modern constitution, laws, politics, and policies intersect in multiple and changing ways. This article seeks to compare and contrast some of the contemporary discourses on sharia and citizenship as demonstrated by Indonesian and Malaysian scholars, politicians, and activists. Both Indonesian and Malaysian constitutions were born out of the modern notion of citizenship that recognizes religious diversity. On the one hand, the Constitution of Indonesia does not specify Islam as the state religion, but the government promotes official religions. On the other hand, the Constitution of Malaysia makes it explicit that Islam is the state religion while recognizing religious diversity. The Indonesian government does not conflate particular ethnicity with Islam, whereas Malaysia integrates Islam and Malay ethnicity amidst Malaysian religious and ethnic plurality. Both cases prevent us from categorizing each case as either an Islamic legal conservatism or a modern legal liberalism. These two cases resist the binary opposition between sharia conservatism deemed against citizenship and modern legal liberalism deemed against religious laws. There are ambiguities, contradictions, as well as compromises and integration between conflicting ideas and systems concerning Islam and citizenship.

Reconstruction of Religious Pluralism or Muhibah Value? A Comparative Study in Malaysia

A scholar affirms that “the pluralistic arrangement” has proven to be a source of socio-political tension rather than a solution. A number of prominent social scientists in the West have yet to suggest that the idea of religious pluralism, is the best way of dealing with diversity, together with its essential values. However, the situation in Malaysia has shown a different scenario. This paper will look into those elements proposed by the Western scholars to be the overriding values of religious pluralism in maintaining a harmonious living among people of different religions. In doing so, this paper will present the ideas of the Malaysian scholars of what they understood as the essence of “majmuk” or living in a plural society as a response to the Western idea of religious pluralism. This will highlight one of the objectives of this paper which is to present selected writings and opinions of Muslims and Christians social scientists in Malaysia on the discourse of religious pluralism. The study has undergone a series of interview to Muslim and Christian scholars. Based on the findings, it is noted that some scholars proved that religious pluralism discourse in Malaysia is contestable. This is due to its link to the Western modern philosophy and secularism. Finally, it also consults meaningful recommendations given by the scholars in facing the challenges of living together as one family in “Muhibah”.

Limitations on Community Participation in Planning Decision-making in Peninsular Malaysia: A Review of Recent Studies

Community participation in planning decision-making in Peninsular Malaysia is fundamental for achieving sustainable development by deliberating on the present and future interests of the community. The provision for the community to participate in both the strategic and operational planning is stated in the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 (Act 172). Community participation in the planning process helps decision-makers to make better decisions by incorporating the community's experiential knowledge into the process. Furthermore, it is meant to promote greater citizenship and to democratise governance through the involvement of multiple stakeholders. Nevertheless, the current state of community participation in planning decision-making in Peninsular Malaysia indicates shortcomings, hence impeding the effort to achieve its primary purpose. This paper attempts to explore the lack of community participation based on its current state. The inadequacies of the conventional participatory process employed by local planning authorities in Peninsular Malaysia are elucidated by reviewing previous studies conducted by Malaysian scholars. The issues that transpire from the literature review are sorted into operational, structural, and cultural aspects. This study concludes that the current community participation in planning decision-making in Peninsular Malaysia points to the ineffectiveness of the process, thus hindering the ability of the community to access a genuine participation avenue.

Ijazah Periwayatan Sanad Kitab Turath Hadith: Analisis Al-Mawahib Al-Ilahiyyah Fi Al-Asanid Al-'Aliyyah Karya Muhammad Salih Bin Uthman Jalal al-Din Al-Malayuwi Al-Makki (1928-2012m)

Al-Ijazah or permission (authorization, license) is a mechanism that transcends the continuity of the transmission of the scripture of the turath of the hadith in order to persist between generation and generation until the present age (suggestion: Al-Ijazah means “permission, license, or authorization” which originally served as written records of the direct audition of a text on the part of the recipient from the transmitting authority. In the field of hadith studies, the formal transmission of a report from one authority to the next in the chain of transmission (isnad), authorized by ijazah). In Malaysia, the preservation of the sanad is practised by Islamic scholars throughout every century including Muhammad Salih bin Uthman Jalal al-Din al-Malayuwi al-Makki. This paper aims to analyze the chain of transmission of turath hadiths carried by Muhammad Salih to the Malaysian scholars through his al-thabat work entitled Kitab al-Mawahib al-Ilahiyyah fi al-Asanid al-'Aliyyah. The research data were collected through content analysis and have been analyzed descriptively. The finding shows that Muhammad Salih possesses the permissions of 47 teachers which he qualified to be labeled as a Malaysian Musnid. This include the ijaza of al-Muwatta', al-kutub al-sittah, al-Awa’il al-Sunbuliyyah and the hadith of al-rahmah al-musalsal al-awwaliyyah. The leading teacher of this scholar is Syeikh Hassan Masysyat. There are four intellectual reflections on the application of the ijaza namely the preservation of the chain of transmission, the protection of the narrators, the example of the tradition of scholars and the importance of acquiring the sanad.

It’s A Jungle Out There: Challenges In Postgraduate Research Writing

Literature in English for academic purposes and postgraduate education suggests that research writing is challenging for students and acts as a barrier to timely completion. In Malaysia, postgraduate numbers are steadily increasing, yet high attrition rates remain a significant problem. Research into thesis writing appears to be an area that is slowly beginning to grow among Malaysian scholars, however most studies focus on public higher education institutions in the country. This study seeks to provide a voice for students from an off-campus university in Malaysia by investigating their writing experiences. The aim was to explore research writing challenges because there seemed to be a lack of any formalised structure which supported the writing process in this institution. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with six full-time postgraduate research students from non-native English-speaking backgrounds and data were analysed using a general inductive approach. It was found that academic language demands were challenging, and this affected writing and disciplinary socialisation. Additionally, some students felt there was an absence of clear direction in writing. Finally, isolation was experienced and resulted in a need to reach out to other communities. These findings reveal the diverse needs of students; if addressed, more timely completion rates and greater student learning experiences may be achieved.

Research on the State of Social Media Studies in Malaysia: 2004-2015

In the recent years, the advancement of social media plays a phenomenal role in the Malaysia’s media and academic landscape. Social media has garnered massive adoption among the online population, paving way for scholars to understand on the usage and impact of social media on the users in the country. The rising numbers of research on social media illustrate a growing interest on this phenomenon. Despite the budding interest among scholars, the understanding on the research patterns and status on social media studies in Malaysia is still inadequate, comparing with the research trends analyses in the West. This paper investigated the trends of social media research in Malaysia from 2004 to 2015. A quantitative content analysis were conducted on 79 articles in 21 selected academic journals in identifying the methodological approach, theoretical application, topical, social media type, type of content and research developmental phases of social media scholarship. Findings revealed social media research in Malaysia is still in formative stage but increasing throughout the years. Unlike findings from past analyses, theory-driven articles in Malaysia were more prevalent than theoretical presence in the West. Nonetheless, Malaysian scholars still lack in conceptualisation and expansion of theories. The study suggests for a more explicit theoretical foundation and technology advancement in the future research. This study also suggests that future scholarly endeavours should have better methodological rigour and wider dispersion of social media medium and content type.

Review of conceptual models and methodologies in research on principal instructional leadership in Malaysia

PurposeOver the past several decades, instructional leadership has gradually gained increasing currency as a key role of school principals throughout much of the world. This is also the case in Malaysia where educational research, policy and practice have brought the instructional leadership role of the principal front and center. The purpose of this paper is to assess the conceptual models, research methods, and foci of scholars in the study of principal instructional leadership in Malaysia over the past 30 years.Design/methodology/approachSystematic methods were used to identify all studies conducted in Malaysia that had used the Principal Instructional Management Rating Scale (PIMRS) (Hallinger, 1982/1990/2015) as the data collection instrument. This search yielded a database of 120 studies completed between 1989 and 2016 written in both English and Bahasa Malay. Common data were extracted from the 120 research reports, coded and entered into a MS Excel spreadsheet for analysis. Quantitative methods were employed to analyze modal trends and synthesize patterns in the data across the studies.FindingsThe search identified 120 PIMRS studies, 90 percent of which had been conducted since 2005. This represented a surprisingly large corpus of studies. Over 75 percent of the Malaysian studies of principal instructional leadership had been conducted as graduate (master and doctoral) theses, relatively few of which had achieved publication in journals. The authors’ analysis found that most studies had used lower order (i.e. bivariate, direct effects) conceptual models and relied heavily on descriptive and simple correlational statistical tests. The lack of consistent results within the database of studies was attributed largely to limitations in research design and quality.Research limitations/implicationsThe 120 PIMRS studies conducted in Malaysia comprise a surprisingly large corpus of research on principal instructional leadership. Indeed, the Malaysian corpus is second only to the USA in terms of the number of PIMRS studies of principal instructional leadership. Nonetheless, limitations in the research models and methods employed in these studies suggest a need for stronger methodological training before Malaysian scholars can achieve the goal of contributing useful knowledge to the local and global knowledge base. Specific recommendations are offered for strengthening the quality of research.Social implicationsThe recent expansion of higher education in Malaysia – like other developing societies – has yielded progress in the scope of research production. However, numerous challenges remain in transforming the potential for useful knowledge production from graduate research into reality.Originality/valueThis is the first review of research on principal leadership conducted in Malaysia. The review follows efforts by scholars to systematically identify the boundaries of knowledge in educational leadership and management within East Asian societies (e.g. China, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and Hong Kong). Moreover, this is the first review of research that examines the use of the PIMRS in a single society.

Exploring the Views of Malaysian Scholars on Knowledge Production in the Social Science

Exploring the Views of Malaysian Scholars on Knowledge Production in the Social Science

From the Editor

From the Editor Kathy Foley This issue is heartening for the international spread of subjects and the number of Asian scholars who are represented and analyzing their own traditions with either local tools or reaching across Asian borders to use ideas from other theatres in the region. Authors are not just assembling the usual icons of twentieth-century Euro-American theory. This indicates that perhaps our field is getting beyond the confines of contemporary Western academic theory. For example, Kyounghye Kwon points out the United Kingdom did not understand Oh Tae-suk’s Tempest, seeing it as “light” since viewers there did not understand the serious use of comedy in Korean performance traditions and theorizations. In a second example, Ghulam-Sawar Yousof and Kheng-Kia Khor, two Malaysian scholars, use the Indonesian theories of refined-coarse (alus-kasar) to analyze wayang kelantan puppetry. Given that Indonesia and Malaysia are often at odds over who owns their linked heritage and that Malay nationalism encourages scholars to limit their thinking to Malay-language sources, this analysis shows an attempt to break nationalist deadlocks. Such writing makes ATJ worth reading. To become a truly international journal, cross-border research that does not always detour to Western thinking is much needed. It is limiting when authors feel they have to routinely apply Western tropes of gender, class, or aesthetics. Of course, Marx, Foucault, Butler, and the other usual suspects have been widely read around the globe, so discourses of semiotics, postmodernism, and postdramatic may fit globalized urban artists steeped in a co-joint international cultural “scene.” But one size does not fit all: too often theories created by and for Western political and social needs are used by academics (both West and East) to address situations in which local theories and practices can be more telling. We must remember that theory is not theoretical—it is about the practical needs of a particular place (often Euro-American areas), a particular time (often the present), and institutional forces (the academy). [End Page iii] We must continually search for the right theoretical tool(s) for the time, place, and artwork engaged. Sometimes the tool will indeed be the current theory in style and the phenomena are actually related, but too often Western theory is a clumsy hammer. I hope that we can increasingly see that postcolonialisms, hybridities, and gender representations are diverse. Writers exploring local ideas and Asia-to-Asia links can birth new theories that grow from Asian practices and Asia’s changing spheres of culture. When this occurs, the writing will force the Western academy beyond its limited concerns and confines. Kathy Foley University of California, Santa Cruz Copyright © 2017 University of Hawai‘i Press

Collaborative and Cooperative Learning in Malaysian Mathematics Education

Collaborative and cooperative learning studies are well recognized in Malaysian mathematics education research. Cooperative learning is used to serve various ability students taking into consideration of their level of understanding, learning styles, sociological backgrounds that develop students’ academic achievement and skills, and breeze the social harmony among students of different ethnic backgrounds. Besides academic achievement, process skills and values are required to extend the social harmony among students in today’s multiethnic schools. Therefore, teachers are expected to find the pedagogy that enables students to learn academic knowledge and professional skills to face the challenges in their everyday lives. The Malaysian scholars, based on the findings of their cooperative learning studies, emphasized the use of cooperative learning as an effective pedagogy with the aim to improve students’ mathematics achievement and communication skills. This paper describes the role of collaborative and cooperative learning to the development of students’ mathematics achievement along with their communication skills and with significant integration of values in Malaysian mathematics education.