[PDF] Mahathirs Islam eBook

Author : Sven Schottmann
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 259 pages
File Size : 43,19 MB
Release : 2018-09-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0824876474

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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.

Author : Mahathir bin Mohamad
Publisher :
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 22,2 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Ex-prime ministers
ISBN :

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Collected speeches delivered through 2004 by Mahathir Mohamad, a former prime minister of Malaysia.

Author : Boo Teik Khoo
Publisher :
Page : 416 pages
File Size : 34,31 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN :

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Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia since 1981, is one of Asia's most successful politicians. Once feared by some as an ideologue of state intervention to restructure Malaysian society, Mahathir is now admired by many for his vision of industrializing his nation into Asia's 'fifth tiger.' Paradoxes of Mahathirism is the first full-length scholarly examination of the enigma of Mahathir. As a study of political ideology, it explores Mahathir's ideas on nationalism, capitalism, Islam, populism, and authoritarianism--the core of Mahathirism. Within the context of Malaysia's recent political history, it charts the evolution of Mahathir's complex world-view to reveal paradoxes, alternating patterns of consistency and contradiction, which help us understand his politics, policies, and personality.

Author : Sven Alexander Schottmann
Publisher :
Page : 478 pages
File Size : 13,74 MB
Release : 2010
Category :
ISBN :

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This thesis represents the first major study of the representations that Mahathir Mohamad made of Islam and of the role that Islam played in shaping his political vision and discourse. The longest serving Prime Minister of Malaysia, holding the post from 1981 to 2003, Mahathir was a remarkable politician by any measure. Most aspects of his leadership have been closely studied, but his articulation of Islam represents a long neglected but greatly needed perspective on both the man and the country that he sought to set onto the path of accelerated modernisation. Apart from identifying dominant themes in the evolving representations he made about Islam, this thesis also investigates the biographical, intellectual and theological influences that underlay his assertion that Islam was not an obstacle to the modernisation of Muslim societies.I put the case that the representations Mahathir made of religion can be conceived of as a relatively coherent discourse which might be called "Mahathir's Islam." Apart from rationalistic and pragmatist interpretations of the religion, these representations also contained Mahathir's assessment of the socio-cultural, economic and political problems facing the contemporary Muslim world, and a "theology of progress," or the range of solutions and corrective measures which he proposed Muslims should adopt. This thesis argues that "Mahathir's Islam" inspired and informed much of the government's 'Islamisation' policies of the 1980s and 1990s. This underscores Mahathir's centrality in the development of Malaysia's public Islam during these years of pivotal change. My analysis concludes that Mahathir's religious discourse was marked by strong dualisms. The public representations he made of 'correctly understood Islam,' were themselves moulded by the competing forces of the circumstances he found himself in as well as his own understandings of religion. Similarly, while Mahathir emphasised the individualistic, egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic and dynamic qualities of Islam, his government concurrently enacted legislation that circumscribed religious freedoms. Conversely, while the representations which Mahathir made of Islam were fraught with contradictions and flaws, his insistence that every Muslim had the right to speak for Islam paradoxically seem to have strengthened the ground for the future democratisation of Malaysian politics.

Author : Tom Plate
Publisher : Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 50,64 MB
Release : 2011-07-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 981434687X

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He began his professional career as a family physician but wound up prescribing innovative political medicines for the entire nation that remain controversial even today. Was he exactly the bold and fearless policy doctor that the troubled body politic of Malaysia needed? Or was he just another mendacious mediocrity with a record of persistent misdiagnoses, phony remedies and self-serving justifications? Only history’s judgment can offer the final verdict but Dr Mahathir himself is in no doubt. In a riveting series of unprecedented conversations, Malaysia’s most famous former prime minister reveals to American journalist and author Tom Plate a panoramic panoply of views on governing, on Islam, on Jews, on the West and on Malays that are striking in historical sweep and contemporary relevance.

Author : Karminder Singh Dhillon
Publisher : NUS Press
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 21,36 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9789971693992

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Summary: "Malaysia's former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is often seen as the sole author of the country's foreign policy. Malaysian Foreign Policy in the Mahathir Era shows that while Mahathir's personality, leadership style, political ideology and brand of nationalism unquestionably had a deep impact, so too did domestic issues and external forces associated with globalization. The book examines seven major foreign policy initiatives of the Mahathir period: Buy British Last, Anti-Commonwealth, Look East, Third World Spokesmanship, Regional Engagement, Islamic Posturing and Commercial and Developmental Diplomacy. In discussing these topics, the author explains the significance for foreign policy of communal concerns, the regime's need to maintain its own authority in the face of political and social initiatives (some rooted in Islam), and its desire to achieve national development. He also discusses external pressures, including Japan's regional designs, Singapore's defense posture and the growing importance of China for the region. The approach breaks away from the elitist decision making styles and single factor models usually employed to explain the foreign policy of developing nations, and establishes a direct link between domestic politics and foreign policy during the period studied, suggesting that the latter was truly an extension of the former."--Publisher description.