elections going back to 1957, even if it has been a one-party state, dominated by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). âMalaysia has made an impact. It is a model country in the Muslim world. People go on from our institution to high positions throughout the Middle East.â Perhaps Professor al-Ahsanâs most famous student was the current Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who studied in Malaysia during the first half of the 1990s. Davutogluâs innovative foreign policy toward the Islamic world has made him the brains behind Turkeyâs awakening as a middle-level power no longer firmly anchored to the West. âIt was Malaysia that gave Davutoglu the opportunity to see the outside worldââor rather a version of it that was both cosmopolitan and Islamic. Thus, Davutoglu was able to envision similar possibilities for his native Turkey.
It is important to realize that Malaysiaâs civilizational Islam has roots that predate the rush to modernizing cities. Khaldun Malek, a Muslim intellectual in Penang, explained to me that Malaysiaâs organic ties to the Middle East go back to the medieval era, when the predictable monsoon winds, friendly as they were to sailboats, allowedfor an Indian Ocean cultural unity that did not have to wait for the age of steamships. Steamships, in fact, only intensified pan-Islamism, so that the late-nineteenth-century Islamic modernism of the Persian Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh, with its emphasis on reacting to the challenge of a technologically ascendant West by finding universalist principles within Islam itself, made its way to the Malay archipelago long before the urbanization of our own era. Malaysia, through all of these developments, has blossomed as an outgrowth of the Middle East in Asia. What delimits Islam here, and provides it with moderation on one hand and insecurity on the other, is the unique fact that this is a society that is 60 percentânot 80 or 90 percentâMuslim. And the remainder of the population is composed overwhelmingly of vigorous civilizations in their own right.
Sinic civilization in particular is a challenger to Islamic dominance. Malaysiaâs Chinese community is arguably the most authentic in the world, without the deracination that accompanied the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China itself; and without the fierce Westernization pursued by the Chinese community in Singapore. Moreover, whereas the Chinese community in Malaysia used to be characterized by diversity, numbering, for example, Hokkien Chinese from Fujian in southern China, and locally born Malay Chinese, known as
Peranakan
, a monochrome and, therefore, potentially nationalistic Chinese identity has now taken root in the big Malaysian citiesâanother upshot of globalization. This is comparable to the monochrome Hinduism that in recent decades has taken root in India, replacing the various regional and village cults of yore. It was this monochrome Hinduism that has been the foundation for Hindu nationalism. The Chinese in Malaysia are very different though, being a commercial-minded middle-man minority without the same call to national greatness as the Hindus, despite their identification with some specific political parties. Yet the potential for Malaysian Chinese to more narrowly identify themselves in ethnic terms exists, faced as they are with what
The Economist
calls âthe sharpening of ethnic and religious dividing linesâ here. 20
âAs a boy, Muslims always came to my house,â one Chinese scholar in Kuala Lumpur told me. âNow it is rare to host Muslims in a Chinese home. Even if your dishes and silverware are clean, they contain the residue of pork and thus are not
halal
, and this contaminates your entire house in Muslim eyes.â I heard a variation of this story throughout my stay in Malaysia. But a Muslim scholar I know said the observation was true only up to a
It is important to realize that Malaysiaâs civilizational Islam has roots that predate the rush to modernizing cities. Khaldun Malek, a Muslim intellectual in Penang, explained to me that Malaysiaâs organic ties to the Middle East go back to the medieval era, when the predictable monsoon winds, friendly as they were to sailboats, allowedfor an Indian Ocean cultural unity that did not have to wait for the age of steamships. Steamships, in fact, only intensified pan-Islamism, so that the late-nineteenth-century Islamic modernism of the Persian Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian Muhammad Abduh, with its emphasis on reacting to the challenge of a technologically ascendant West by finding universalist principles within Islam itself, made its way to the Malay archipelago long before the urbanization of our own era. Malaysia, through all of these developments, has blossomed as an outgrowth of the Middle East in Asia. What delimits Islam here, and provides it with moderation on one hand and insecurity on the other, is the unique fact that this is a society that is 60 percentânot 80 or 90 percentâMuslim. And the remainder of the population is composed overwhelmingly of vigorous civilizations in their own right.
Sinic civilization in particular is a challenger to Islamic dominance. Malaysiaâs Chinese community is arguably the most authentic in the world, without the deracination that accompanied the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China itself; and without the fierce Westernization pursued by the Chinese community in Singapore. Moreover, whereas the Chinese community in Malaysia used to be characterized by diversity, numbering, for example, Hokkien Chinese from Fujian in southern China, and locally born Malay Chinese, known as
Peranakan
, a monochrome and, therefore, potentially nationalistic Chinese identity has now taken root in the big Malaysian citiesâanother upshot of globalization. This is comparable to the monochrome Hinduism that in recent decades has taken root in India, replacing the various regional and village cults of yore. It was this monochrome Hinduism that has been the foundation for Hindu nationalism. The Chinese in Malaysia are very different though, being a commercial-minded middle-man minority without the same call to national greatness as the Hindus, despite their identification with some specific political parties. Yet the potential for Malaysian Chinese to more narrowly identify themselves in ethnic terms exists, faced as they are with what
The Economist
calls âthe sharpening of ethnic and religious dividing linesâ here. 20
âAs a boy, Muslims always came to my house,â one Chinese scholar in Kuala Lumpur told me. âNow it is rare to host Muslims in a Chinese home. Even if your dishes and silverware are clean, they contain the residue of pork and thus are not
halal
, and this contaminates your entire house in Muslim eyes.â I heard a variation of this story throughout my stay in Malaysia. But a Muslim scholar I know said the observation was true only up to a
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