CHALLENGE OF POLITICAL ISLAM AND IDENTITY POLITICS IN MALAYSIA… James Chin

I gave a talk last week on this issue in a forum on Religion, Extremism and Identity Politics, organised by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

This is a real issue in Malaysia and, in my opinion, there are no easy answers or solutions in sight. All I know is that if nothing is done at the institutional level, Malaysia may be heading towards a political culture that resembles the one in Pakistan or Bangladesh.

A lot of non-Muslims in Malaysia do not understand this issue because they (1) are told it has nothing to do with non-Muslim Malaysians, and (2) must STFU because they have no right to talk about Islam as they are non-Muslims.

Just to be clear, I am not talking about religion (Islam) here, but how religion is used for identity politics which can lead to many nasty things.

My paper on this topic can be found here:
https://www.academia.edu/…/Malaysia_Pseudo-democracy_and_th…