Islam, Knowledge & Power: A Critical Study on Islamisation in Malay World

Introduction

Islam has been a key feature in the history of Malaysia, historically also referred to as the Malay World or the Malay Archipelago. The dominant narrative of Islamisation has generally provided a rather linear and stable regularity in explaining the role of Islam in Malaysia and in propagating the needs to reposition Islam to the path of Islamisation for the Malaysian nation state. This narrative on Islam has also been instrumental ideologically to further operationalise the process of Islamisisation in various spheres of societal lives in Malaysia, most notably in terms of the Islamisation of knowledge and education, with the formation of several research and study institutions. The influences of the Islamisation narrative can also be seen as have been expanded further in Muslim youths and civil society movements, government policies, and in some forms legal and political decisions in the country.

However, a critical perspective to this Islamisation narrative as to be quite simplistic, overly idealistic, and lacking a comprehensive historical view of the world and modernity. On top of that, this narrative has also been an effective tool to feed the rising Islamic conservatism, religious superiority and a hierarchical approach to Islam, while discouraging the advancement of the more democratic and determined self-agency of Muslims. Furthermore, the Islamisation narrative lacks a critical examination on religious authorities and critical analysis on power relations in the path of the Islamisation process, and the shaping of Malay-Muslims in Malaysia of today.

Thus, further critical perspectives on the Islamisation narrative should be explored in providing a better explanation on the topic of Islam, and the complexities of Muslims in Malaysia. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of Islam in Malaysia, relying on the narrative of Islamisation, or by depending on ‘essentialist’ perspective of Islam must be deemed as insufficient. What is required to understand Islamisation in Malaysia is a critical examination on the formation of the discourse on Islam, and the complexities of its knowledge production and power relations that have contributed in the shaping of Muslims in Malaysia to the current time. Based on this realization, this critical examination on Islamisation and the Knowledge-Power Relations in Malaysia is proposed.

Paper Design

The general aim of this paper is to conduct a critical examination on Islamisation, and its relations to knowledge and power in the shaping of Muslims in Malaysia. Three main objectives are listed as the following;

1. To describe the discursive formations of Islam in Malaysia;
2. To explain the relation between Islam and knowledge-power in Malaysia; and
3. To examine the role of Islam in the knowledge-power relations in the shaping of Muslims in Malaysia.

The critical examinations are to be conducted based on a periodization of 3 epistemic phases based on the key periods of the history of Islam in Malaysia;

Phase 1: Between the coming of Islam to the start of European Colonisation (10th to 16th Century).

Phase 2: During Colonialisation between the 16th to 20th Century; in particular during British Colonisation (1874-1957).

Phase 3: During Post-colonial Malaysia; 1957 to the recent times.

Theoretical/Conceptual Reference

“My objective... has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects.”

- Foucault, The Subject and Power

This paper will utilize the theoretical and conceptual references of Michel Foucault’s; mainly based on his Archaeology of Knowledge and the Genealogical approach. This paper is partly inspired by Foucault’s study on the discourse of the Human Science in The Order of Things. Even though, the archaeological approach in the Order of Things was used to specifically study the discourse of the Human Science, Foucault explains that such approach is not only limited to the study of the human sciences, but could also be utilized in the study of other fields;

“Is archaeology concerned only with sciences? Is it always an analysis of scientific discourses? We can now give a reply, in each case in the negative. What archaeology tries to describe is not the specific structure of science, but the very different domain of knowledge.. that (the discourse of the sciences) was no more than a preferential point of attack; it is not, for archaeology, an obligatory domain” (Foucault, 1982: pg. 195).

Foucault also adopted a genealogical approach in his works studying history. Foucault (1978) described his genealogical approach,

“In short, genealogy demands relentless erudition. Genealogy does not oppose itself to history as the lofty and profound gaze of the philosopher might compare to the molelike perspective of the scholar; on the contrary, it rejects the meta-historical deployment of ideal significations and indefinite teleologies. It opposes itself to the search of ‘origins’.”

There is a close relation between Foucault’s Archeological and Genealogical approaches. Koopman (2008) explains that Foucault developed the later genealogical approach as an expansion to his earlier archaeological approach, in which the shift to genealogy provided several important links, among others; to relate between the discursive and the non-discursive elements of his studies; to relate between knowledge and power; and to relate the historical to the present.

This study proposal sees the relevance of utilizing both Foucault’s two approaches; Archaeology and Genealogy in studying Islamisation in Malaysia, based on the objectives stated earlier. The key concepts from Foucault that are useful for this paper include episteme, discursive formation, power/knowledge, and governmentality.

Reference

Foucault, M. 1978. Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In John Richardson & Brian Leiter (eds.), Nietzsche. Oxford University Press. pp. (139-164)

Foucault, M. 1982. The Archaeology of Knowledge: And the Discourse on Language. Random House USA Inc.

Foucault, M. 1994. The Order of Things : An Archaeology of Human Sciences. Random House USA Inc.

Koopman, C. 2008. Foucault’s Historiographical Expansion: Adding Genealogy to Archaeology. Journal of the Philosophy of History 2. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden (page 338–362).