1 Welsh, Bridget, ‘Malaysia's political polarization: Race, religion, and reform’, in Political polarization in South and Southeast Asia: Old divisions, new dangers, ed. Carothers, Thomas and O'Donohue, Andrew (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020), pp. 41–52Google Scholar; Ismail, Salwa, ‘Being Muslim: Islam, Islamism and identity politics’, Government & Opposition 39, 4 (2004): 614–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fukyama, Francis, Identity: The demand for dignity and the politics of resentment (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2018)Google Scholar; Mishra, Pankaj, Age of anger: A history of the present (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017)Google Scholar.

2 Nasr, Seyyed Vali Reza, Islamic leviathan: Islam and the making of state power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Liow, Joseph Chinyong, Piety and politics: Islamism in contemporary Malaysia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kikue Hamayotsu, ‘Demobilizing Islam: Institutionalized religion and the politics of co-optation in Malaysia’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, Canberra, 2005); Mohamad, Maznah, The divine bureaucracy and disenchantment of social life: A study of bureaucratic Islam in Malaysia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Liow, Joseph Chinyong, ‘Political Islam in Malaysia: Problematising discourse and practice in the UMNO-PAS “Islamisation race”’, Commonweath and Comparative Politics 42, 2 (2004): 184–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 BN refers to a multiethnic coalition that governed Malaysia from its inception in 1957, first under the name of the Alliance Party and later BN in 1973, until its electoral defeat by Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope, PH) in 2018. BN was part of a ruling coalition with its splinter party, the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (Bersatu) and PAS from 2020 to 2022 but joined PH in government after Malaysia's 15th General Election in 2022.

5 Nagata, Judith, The reflowering of Malaysian Islam: Modern religious radicals and their roots (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Muzaffar, Chandra, Islamic resurgence in Malaysia (Petaling Jaya: Fajar Bakti, 1987)Google Scholar; Anwar, Zainah, Islamic revivalism in Malaysia (Petaling Jaya: Fajar Bakti, 1987)Google Scholar; Mutalib, Hussin, Islam and ethnicity in Malay politics (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 Kepel, Gilles, Jihad: The trail of political Islam (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002)Google Scholar; Hamid, Ahmad Fauzi Abdul, ‘The extensive salafization of Malaysian Islam’, Trends in Southeast Asia 9 (Singapore: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak, 2016)Google Scholar; Osman, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed, ‘Transnational Islamism and its impact in Malaysia and Indonesia’, Middle East Review of International Affairs 15, 2 (2011): 42–52Google Scholar; Zulkifly Abdul Malik, ‘From Cairo to Kuala Lumpur: The influence of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood on the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM) (MA diss., Georgetown University, Washington DC, 2011).

7 Nasr, Islamic leviathan; Liow, Piety and politics; Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy.

8 In this article I use the terms ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘Islamism’ to denote both the ideological and social bases of Muslim movements, while being mindful of how these terms themselves have been used to stigmatise Muslim actors. Here, Islamist fundamentalism ‘implies an outlook that idealises the “golden age” of Islam and offers a return to this golden age through the restoration of primary values and rules of social and personal behavior on the basis of timeless precepts’ (Liow, Piety and politics, p. 6). Islamism refers to a political phenomenon that witnessed the establishment of Muslim Brotherhood-linked or -inspired (though not exclusively so) parties and movements that seek to establish an Islamic state of some sort through overt political activism and electoral participation. Being a fundamentalist may overlap with being an Islamist, but need not always be so. In short, a fundamentalist is generally distinguished by a literalist approach to religion, but an Islamist is one who strives to integrate Islamic symbols, precepts, and visions into politics.

9 This can be seen from the fact that Mahathir, after he came back into power briefly as prime minister of the PH government, had opted to reform the education system, claiming that too much time was dedicated to Islamic subjects. See ‘PM Mahathir to overhaul Malaysia's schools, saying too much focus on Islamic studies now’, Straits Times, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/pm-mahathir-to-overhaul-malaysias-schools-saying-too-much-focus-on-islam-studies-now (last accessed 25 June 2022).

10 On the closing of UMNO and PAS’ ideological distance, see Liow, Piety and politics; Liow, ‘Political Islam in Malaysia’. On Mahathir's personalised rule, see Slater., Dan ‘Iron cage in an iron fist: Authoritarian institutions and the personalization of power in Malaysia’, Comparative Politics 36, 1 (2003): 80–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hwang, In-Won, Personalized politics: The Malaysian state under Mahathir (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Liow, Joseph Chinyong, ‘The Mahathir administration's war against Islamic militancy: Operational and ideological challenges’, Australian Journal of International Affairs 58, 2 (2004): 253CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrew Humphreys, ‘A total approach: The Malaysian security model and political development’ (PhD diss., University of Wollonggong, 2009).

12 Sven Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam: Mahathir Mohamad on religion and modernity in Malaysia (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018), p. 10.

13 Marco A. Vieira, ‘(Re-)imagining the “self” of ontological security: The case of Brazil's ambivalent postcolonial subjectivity’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 46, 2 (2018): 143.

14 R.D. Laing, The divided self, reprint (London: Penguin, 1990[1965]), p. 39.

15 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), p. 55.

16 Ibid., p. 55.

17 Caterina Kinnvall, ‘Globalization and religious nationalism: Self, identity, and the search for ontological security’, Political Psychology 25, 5 (2004): 747.

18 Brent J. Steele, Ontological security in international relations: Self identity and the IR state (Oxford: Routledge, 2008), p. 151.

19 On the importance of biographical narratives to state identity, see Steele, Ontological security, pp. 10–12; Jelena Subotic, ‘Narrative, ontological security, and foreign policy change’, Foreign Policy Analysis 12, 4 (2016): 610–27.

20 Nicholas Lees, ‘The dimensions of the divide: Vertical differentiation, international inequality and North–South stratification in international relations theory’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 25, 2 (2012): 209–30.

21 Ayşe Zarakol, After defeat: How the East learned to live with the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 57–108.

22 Ibid., p. 15.

23 Ibid., p. 6.

24 Ibid., p. 4.

25 Cemil Aydin, The idea of the Muslim world: A global intellectual history (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).

26 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 87.

27 Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, The politics of secularism in international relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

28 Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, ‘Appropriating Islam: The Islamic other in the consolidation of Western modernity’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 12, 1 (2003): 40.

29 Mustapha Kamal Pasha, ‘Fractured worlds: Islam, identity, and international relations’, Global Society 17, 2 (2003): 113; emphasis in the original.

30 These political expressions of pan-Islam, however, tend to be confined to local political agitations. See Anthony Reid, ‘Nineteenth century pan-Islam in Indonesia and Malaysia’, Journal of Asian Studies 26, 2 (1967): 267–83; Chiara Formichi, ‘Pan-Islam and religious nationalism: The case of Kartosuwiryo and Negara Islam Indonesia’, Indonesia 90 (2010): 124–46.

31 Aydin, The idea of the Muslim world, p. 5.

32 US Department of State, ‘Chapter 5’, Country Reports on Terrorism 2007, https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2007/104114.htm (last accessed 20 June 2022).

33 Ahmet T. Kuru, Islam, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment: A global and historical comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

34 Zarakol, After defeat, p. 146.

35 Syed Hussein Alatas, The myth of the lazy native: A study of the image of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese from the 16th to the 20th century and its function in the ideology of colonial capitalism (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 218.

36 Harry J. Benda, ‘Political elites in colonial southeast Asia: An historical analysis’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 7, 3 (1965): 234–35.

37 Muhamad Ali, Islam and colonialism: Becoming modern in Indonesia and Malaya (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), pp. 59–64, 182–4; Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam, pp. 119–22.

38 The formation of Malaysia is basically a three-part story that witnessed: first, the independence of the Federation of Malaya covering the Malay Peninsula in 1957; second, the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 when Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore joined the federation; and third, the separation of Singapore in 1965.

39 N.J. Funston, Malay politics in Malaysia: A study of the United Malays National Organisation and Party Islam (Kuala Lumpur: Heinemann Educational, 1980), pp. 145–50.

40 Quoted in Fred R. von der Mehden, ‘Religion and politics in Malaysia’, Asian Survey 3, 12 (1963): 611.

41 James C. Scott, Political ideology in Malaysia: Reality and beliefs of an elite (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).

42 Ibid., p. 153.

43 Ibid., p. 173.

44 Alatas, The myth of the lazy native.

45 Scott, Political ideology in Malaysia, p. 203; emphasis mine.

46 Ibid., p. 203. On the colonial construction of the category of religion as the domain that was most unamenable to the market economy for its personal, even irrational and incendiary nature, see Julia Stephens, Governing Islam: Law, empire, and secularism in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Iza Hussin, ‘The new global politics of religion: Religious harmony, public order, and securitisation in the post-colony’, Journal of Religious and Political Practice 4, 1 (2018): 93–106.

47 A.C. Milner, ‘The impact of the Turkish Revolution on Malaya’, Archipel 31 (1986): 127.

48 Scott, Political ideology in Malaysia, p. 232.

49 Diane K. Mauzy and R.S. Milne, ‘The Mahathir administration in Malaysia: Discipline through Islam’, Pacific Affairs 56, 4 (1983): 633.

50 Iza Hussin, The politics of Islamic law: Local elites, colonial authority, and the making of the Muslim state (London: University of Chicago Press, 2016), p. 263.

51 Ibid., p. 263.

52 Benda, ‘Political elites in colonial southeast Asia’, p. 234.

53 Scott, Political ideology in Malaysia, p. 208.

54 See Liow, Piety and politics; Kikue Hamayotsu, ‘Politics of syariah reform: The making of the state religio-legal apparatus’, in Malaysia: Islam, society, and politics, ed. Virginia Hooker and Noraini Othman (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003), pp. 55–79; Shanti Nair, Islam in Malaysian foreign policy (London: Routledge, 1997); Nasr, Islamic leviathan.

55 Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam, p. 10.

56 On studies about Mahathir's intellectual biography and more pertinently, his thinking about Islam, see Khoo Boo Teik, Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An intellectual biography of Mahathir Mohamad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam; Sven Alexander Schottmann, ‘God helps those who help themselves: Islam according to Mahathir Mohamad’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 24, 1 (2013): 57–69; Sven Alexander Schottmann, ‘The pillars of “Mahathir's Islam”: Mahathir Mohamad on being-Muslim in the modern world’, Asian Studies Review 35, 3: 355–72.

57 On the ‘Islamisation of knowledge’ movement in Malaysia led by Al-Attas and how it transpired amidst a broader environment of state bureaucratisation and intra-Muslim political competition, see Mona Abaza, ‘Intellectuals, power and Islam in Malaysia: S.N. al-Attas or the beacon on the crest of a hill’, Archipel 58 (1999): 189–217; Mona Abaza, Debates on Islam and knowledge in Malaysia and Egypt (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002).

58 Schottman, Mahathir's Islam, p. 118.

59 Schottmann, ‘Pillars of Mahathir's Islam’, p. 368.

60 Khoo, The paradoxes of Mahathirism, pp. 181–6.

61 Barry Wain's documentation of Mahathir's political journey charts a process that was far from determinate, with his predecessor Hussein Onn doubting his choice almost every step of the way. See Barry Wain, Malaysian maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in turbulent times (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 33–40.

62 Mauzy and Milne, ‘The Mahathir administration’, p. 627.

63 Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam, p. 79.

64 For this article, the English version is used as a primary reference. See Mahathir Mohamad, The Challenge (Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk, 1986).

65 Syed Muhammad Naguib Al-Attas, Islam and secularism (Kuala Lumpur: ABIM, 1978).

66 Abaza, Debates on Islam, p. 99.

67 Anwar's opposition to the policy also occurred after his fallout with Mahathir in the late 1990s. So, his position on the policy could also just be a matter of politics. But Anwar also enjoyed a disciple–teacher relationship with al-Attas and the Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia (ABIM)—an Islamist social movement he co-founded)—who were strongly against the policy too. See ‘ABIM opposes proposed PPSMI plan’, New Straits Times, https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2020/02/563296/abim-opposes-proposed-ppsmi-plan (last accessed 4 July 2022).

68 Mahathir's reentry into UMNO in 1972 was followed by a meteoric rise. He was one of the party's vice presidents by 1975, and following Tunku Abdul Razak's death in 1976, was made deputy president to Hussein Onn. In government, he was made the minister of education in 1974, deputy prime minister in 1976, and was prime minister by 1981.

69 Mahathir Mohamad, The challenge, p. viii.

70 Ibid., pp. 17–43.

71 The ‘modernist vs traditionalist’ break in Malaysia's landscape of Islam dates back to the kaum muda/ kaum tua (young and old faction) contestations in the early 20th century, which encompassed both theological and political differences. The kaum muda were then mainly led by cosmopolitan intellectuals of Hadrami descent urging for socio-religious reforms, whereas the kaum tua were mainly the ulamas (Islamic scholars) heading the palace-linked religious establishment. It is important, though, not to read this divide into the contemporary era as an unbroken lineage from the past or see the successors of the struggle today on the normative grounds of ‘liberalism vs conservatism’. See William R. Roff, The origins of Malay nationalism (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malay Press, 1967), pp. 56–90; William R. Roff, ‘Kaum Muda–Kaum Tua: Innovation and reaction amongst the Malays, 1900–41’, Readings on Islam in Southeast Asia, ed. Ahmad Ibrahim, Sharon Siddique and Yasmin Hussain (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985), pp. 123–9. On writings about the contemporary religio-political divide between Malaysia's so-called salafi and traditionalist camps, see Maszlee Malik, ‘Theology in Malaysia: Between mainstream and periphery’, Hikma: Journal of Islamic Theology and Religious Education 6 (2013): 61–4; Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid, ‘The extensive salafization of Malaysian Islam’.

72 Mohamad, The challenge, p. viii.

73 Ibid., p. 36.

74 Mahathir was minister of education when the book was published, which coincided, according to Schottmann, with an itinerary that exposed him to ‘the ideas of iconic figures of the nascent sahwa al-islamiyya, such as Fazlur Rahman, Hasan Hanafi, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Ali Shariati, and Malaysia's own Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas and Muhammad Kamal Hassan’. See Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam, p. 118; on Mahathir's upbringing and his exposure to Islamic modernist ideas, see ibid., pp. 119–26.

75 The NEP was a poverty eradication and social engineering project implemented after the May 13 ethnic riots in 1969. Premised on the idea that reducing poverty and especially inequalities between the Chinese and the Malays was key to preserving Malaysia's social harmony, the NEP entailed both welfarist programmes and affirmative action favouring the Bumiputeras (Malaysia's indigenous population consisting of largely but not exclusively Malay Muslims) in, among many other areas, education, scholarships, government contracts, employment. The policy remains in place today, muddled by mixed results, spotty implementation, and polarised policy discourses that have impeded any meaningful reform. See Terence Gomez and Johan Saravanamuttu, eds, The New Economic Policy in Malaysia: Affirmative action, ethnic inequalities, and social justice (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013); Lee Hwok-Aun, ‘Malaysia's New Economic Policy: Fifty years of polarization and impasse’, Southeast Asian Studies 11, 2 (2022): 299–329.

76 Senu Abdul Rahman et al., eds, Revolusi mental [Mental revolution] (Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Melayu), p. 204.

77 On critiques of al-Attas’ views as an ‘anti-orientalist orientalist’, see Abaza, ‘Intellectuals, power and Islam in Malaysia’, pp. 199–217; Ahmad Fuad Rahmat, ‘The professor and the secular’, Critical Muslim 7 (2013): 81–100.

78 Mohamad, The challenge, p. 114.

79 Alatas, The myth of the lazy native, p. 143.

80 Mahathir Mohamad, The Malay dilemma, reprint with a new preface (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2008[1970]), p. 9. On the British empire and scientific racism, see Henrika Kuklick, The savage within: The social history of British anthropology, 1885–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Nancy Stepan, The idea of race in science: Great Britain 1800–1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982).

81 Mohamad, The Malay dilemma, p. 41.

82 ‘If the Malays are to be rehabilitated, all the attitudes and values that have contributed to their present dilemma must be studied, assessed and where necessary, discarded or modified.’ See Mohamad, The Malay dilemma, p. 146.

83 Mohamad, The challenge, p. 47.

84 In Mahathir's words, ‘If we study the histories of the peoples conquered and colonized by the West, one salient fact we will note is their lack of discipline.’ Ibid., p. 46.

85 Abaza, Debates on Islam, pp. 89–100.

86 Shaharuddin Maaruf, ‘Religion and utopian thinking among the Muslims of Southeast Asia’, Seminar paper, Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore, 2001, p. 10.

87 Mahathir Mohamad, ‘Islam: The misunderstood religion’, Islamic Studies 36, 4 (1997): 691. This is the text of a lecture Mahathir delivered at the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies, Oxford, 16 Apr. 1996.

88 Mohamad, The challenge, p. 73; Schottmann, ‘God helps those who help themselves’, pp. 57–69.

89 Mohamad, The challenge, p. 72.

90 Ibid., p. 74.

91 Schottmann, Mahathir's Islam, p. 108; Khoo, The paradoxes of Mahathirism, pp. 172–3.

92 Zarakol, After defeat, p. 29.

93 Mohamad, The challenge, p. 46.

94 Ibid, p. 46. ‘The West in decline’ was a key theme in Mahathir's thoughts. See Khoo, The paradoxes of Mahathirism, pp. 42–6.

95 Mohamad, The challenge, pp. 60–61.

96 Ibid., p. 57.

97 On an account of Islam (or Islamism) as the master signifier of a discursive project to decentre the West, most prominently seen in Khomeini's brand of revolutionary Islam, see Bobby S. Sayyid, A fundamental fear: Eurocentrism and the emergence of Islamism (London: Zed, 1997).

98 Mohamad, The challenge, p. 72.

99 Speech by Mahathir Mohamad at ‘The Meeting and Dialogue Session with Moroccan Islamic Intellectuals, Think Tanks and Parliamentarians’, Rabat, 16 Apr. 2002. On the gap between the historical reality of the ‘golden age’ of Islam and its employment in contemporary discourses, see Ira M. Lapidus, ‘The golden age: The political concepts of Islam’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 524 (1992): 13–25.

100 Roff, The origins of Malay nationalism; Anthony Milner, The invention of politics in colonial Malaya (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

101 Khoo, The paradoxes of Mahathirism, pp. 17–102.

102 Nasr, Islamic leviathan, pp. 16–17.

103 David Delfolie, ‘Malaysian extraversion towards the Muslim world: Ideological positioning for a “mirror effect”’, Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 31, 4 (2012): 30.

104 Liow, Piety and politics; Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy; Nasr, Islamic leviathan.

105 ‘PM: New committee to review Jakim's role’, Malay Mail Online, https://www.malaymail.com/news/malaysia/2018/05/30/pm-new-committee-to-review-jakims-role/1636462 (last accessed 29 June 2022); Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy, pp. 135–40. On the conservative slide of Malaysian Islam, Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman, ‘The Islamic conservative turn in Malaysia: Impact and future trajectories’, Contemporary Islam 11, 1 (2017): 1–20.

106 Schottmann, ‘God helps those who help themselves’, pp. 57–69.

107 Kementerian Pembangunan Kerajaan Tempatan, ‘Dasar Penerapan Nilai-Nilai Islam dalam Pentadbiran Negara’ [The assimilation of Islamic values in the administration of the country], https://www.kpkt.gov.my/resources/index/user_1/pengurusan_kualiti/Dasar_Penerapan_Nilai_Islam.pdf, pp. 1–2 (last accessed 28 June 2022); emphasis mine.

108 Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy, p. 78.

109 On the federated nature of Malaysia's Islamic bureaucracy, see ibid., pp. 71–5.

110 On JAKIM, see ibid., pp. 79–90; Liow, Piety and politics, pp. 48–52; Norshahril Saat, The state, ulama and Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), p. 55. The hajj pilgrimage and Syariah reforms are currently handled by two other departments under the Prime Minister's Department: the Jabatan Wakaf, Zakat dan Haji (Department of Wakaf, Zakat, and Hajj, JAWHAR) and Jabatan Kehakiman Syariah Malaysia (Syariah Judicial Department of Malaysia, JKSM). But JAKIM, which was instituted earlier, played a leading role in these matters until JKSM and JAWHAR were established in 1998 and 2004, respectively.

111 Jomo Kwame Sundaram, ‘“Malaysia incorporated”: Corporatism a la Mahathir’, Institutions and Economics 6, 1 (2014): 73–94.

112 Nasr, Islamic leviathan, p. 128.

113 Ayşe Zarakol, ‘Revisiting second image reversed: Lessons from Turkey and Thailand’, International Studies Quarterly 57, 1 (2013): 150–62.

114 Liow, Piety and politics, p. 181.

115 Michael G. Peletz, Islamic modern: Religious courts and cultural politics in Malaysia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 21. Also see Dominik M. Müller, ‘Bureaucratic Islam compared: Classificatory power and state-ifed religious meaning-making in Brunei and Singapore’, Journal of Law and Religion 33, 2 (2018): 212–47; Hew Wai Weng, ‘Consumer space as political space: Liquid Islamism in Malaysia and Indonesia’, in Political participation in Asia: Defining and deploying political space, ed. Eva Hansson and Meredith L. Weiss (Oxford: Routledge, 2018), pp. 112–29; Johan Fischer, The halal frontier: Muslim consumers in a globalized market (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

116 Kikue Hamayotsu, ‘The political origins of Islamic courts in divided societies: The case of Malaysia’, Journal of Law and Religion 33, 2 (2018): 269. To be sure, as Aihwa Ong observed, on the mass level, there remains ‘an ethical skepticism about linking the fate of the Muslim society to a wider ecology of Western expertise and enterprise’. See Aihwa Ong, ‘Ecologies of expertise: Assembling flows, managing citizenship’, in Global assemblages: Technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems, ed. Aihwa Ong and Stephen J. Collier (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), p. 349.

117 Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy.

118 On the administration of Islam during the colonial period, see Moshe Yegar, Islam and Islamic institutions in British Malaya: Policies and implementation (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1979).

119 Fischer, The halal frontier.

120 Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy, p. 109.

121 Johan Fischer, ‘Manufacturing halal in Malaysia’, Contemporary Islam 10, 1 (2016): 35–52.

122 ‘Malaysia–The world's leading halal hub’, itc.gov.my, https://itc.gov.my/tourists/discover-the-muslim-friendly-malaysia/malaysia-the-worlds-leading-halal-hub/ (last accessed 4 July 2022).

123 Sloane-White's work remains the best resource on this topic, especially on the lifeworld of an ascendant, self-confident ‘Islamic’ capitalist class that is a direct result of, and in many ways remains, an important vehicle to Islamisation programmes that began in the Mahathir years. See Patricia Sloane-White, Islam, modernity and entrepreneurship among the Malays (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999); Patricia Sloane-White, Corporate Islam: Sharia and the modern workplace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

124 Daromir Rudnyckyj, Beyond debt: Islamic experiments in global finance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019).

125 Mahathir Mohamad, ‘Opening address to the Seminar on Developing Islamic Financial Instruments’, Kuala Lumpur, 28 Apr. 1986.

126 Abayomi A. Alawode et al., ‘Malaysia: Islamic finance & financial inclusion’, Malaysia Development Series (Kuala Lumpur: World Bank, 2020), p. 19.

127 Sloane-White, Corporate Islam, pp. 32–3.

128 Ibid., p. 39.

129 Ibid., p. 40.

130 USIM was upgraded to university status from the Islamic University College of Malaysia (KUIM) that was established in 1998.

131 ‘Overview’, https://www.usim.edu.my/introduction/ (last accessed 4 July 2022).

132 The three most recent vice-chancellors are a molecular biologist, a chemist, and a theoretical physicist, respectively, all trained in Western universities. The current vice-chancellor, Sharifudin Md Shaarani, is a Cambridge-trained food scientist.

133 See Farish A. Noor. ‘Re-orienting the “West”? The transnational debate on the status of the “West” in the debates among Islamist intellectuals and students from the 1970s to the present’, Majalah Al-jamiah 47, 1 (2009): 1–47; Wiebke Keim, ‘“Islamization of knowledge: Symptom of the failed internationalization of the social sciences?’, Method(e)s: African Review of Social Science Methodology 2, 1–2 (2017): 127–54.

134 Muhammad Kamal Hassan, ‘The implications of science and technology: Education and development of Islamic values’, paper presented at DSE-RIHED Conference on ‘Cultural Heritage versus Technological Development: Challenges to Education’, Singapore, 23–27 Sept. 1980, p. 3.

135 Ibid., p. 5.

136 Darren Zook, ‘Making space for Islam: Religion, science, and politics in contemporary Malaysia’, Journal of Asian Studies 69, 4 (2010): 1151.

137 Ibid., p. 1154.

138 Mohamad, ‘Islam: The misunderstood religion’, p. 699; emphasis mine.

139 Saba Mahmood, ‘Secularism, hermeneutics, and empire: The politics of Islamic reformation’, Public Culture 18, 6 (2006): 323–47.

140 Pamela Sodhy, ‘U.S.–Malaysian relations during the Bush administration: The political, economic, and security aspects’, Contemporary Southeast Asia 25, 3 (2003): 363–86.

141 Liow, Piety and politics, p. 82.

142 For an example of an analysis that attributed the pronouncement to the UMNO–PAS Islamising race, see Liow, ‘Political Islam in Malaysia’, pp. 197–8.

143 ‘Malaysia a fundamentalist Islamic country, says PM’, Malaysiakini, https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/11804 (last accessed 4 July 2022).

144 ‘Bukti PAS tidak sama Taliban, bukan pengganas’ [Evidence that PAS is not the same as Taliban and terrorists], Harakah Daily, https://harakahdaily.net/index.php/2019/03/24/bukti-pas-tidak-sama-taliban-bukan-pengganas/ (last accessed 4 July 2022).

145 On the domestic reception of Islam Hadhari, see Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Muhamad Takiyudin Ismail, ‘Islamist conservatism and the demise of Islam Hadhari in Malaysia’, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 25, 2 (2014): 159–80.

146 Speech by Abdullah Badawi, ‘Islam Hadhari in a multi-racial society’, Sydney, 8 Apr. 2005.

147 ‘Malaysia at the UNSC-Global Movement of Moderates’, kln.gov, http://malaysiaunsc.kln.gov.my/index.php/malaysia-at-the-unsc/malaysia-s-commitment/global-movement-of-moderates-gmm (last accessed 4 July 2022). On the IS phenomenon, see Fawaz Gerges, ISIS: A history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).

148 ‘Malaysian Prime Minister's speech on moderation’, wikileaks, https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/27882 (last accessed 4 July 2022). ‘Joint Statement by President Obama and Prime Minister Najib of Malaysia’, Obama White House Archive, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/27/joint-statement-president-obama-and-prime-minister-najib-malaysia-0 ((last accessed 4 July 2022).

149 Despite Mahathir's overseeing of an extensive array of Islamisation programmes, he never once picked an Islamic motto to outline his governing philosophy. The slogans of his government were generally more inclusive, most famous being the ideas of Vision 2020 and Bangsa Malaysia (Malaysian Race, or People) introduced in 1991, none of which incorporated much Islamic concepts in their blueprint and discourses.

150 Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Ayşe Zarakol, ‘Struggles for recognition: The liberal international order and the merger of its discontents’, International Organization 25, 2 (2021): 611–34.

151 For perspectives on Malaysia's political transition and the coup that reversed it, see Meredith L. Weiss and Faisal S. Hazis, Towards a new Malaysia? The 2018 election and its aftermath (Singapore: NUS Press); Wong, Chin-Huat, ‘Parliament as prime minister's electoral college: The defection game in Malaysia's democratic backsliding’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs 109, 5 (2020): 586–607CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

152 ‘Malaysia's most powerful Islamic body faces scrutiny’, Straits Times, https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/malaysias-most-powerful-islamic-body-faces-scrutiny (last accessed 4 July 2022).

153 JAKIM, The profile of Maqasid Shariah in state governance (Putrajaya: JAKIM, 2018), pp. 86–9.

154 For an account of how the ulamas took advantage of the state's institutionalisation and centralisation of Islam for state capture, see Saat, The state, ulama and Islam.

155 See explorations of these factors at Nagata, The reflowering of Malaysian Islam; Muzaffar, Islam resurgence; Bakar, Mohamad Abu, ‘External influences on contemporary Islamic resurgence in Malaysia’, Contemporary Southeast Asia 13, 2 (1991): 220–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

156 The stark difference between the number of national fatwas issued during Mahathir's tenure of 22 years (131) and Badawi's 6 years (104) shows that the Islamic bureaucracy has taken a life of its own and that Mahathir was more of a tempering factor towards its influence instead of being able to command its institutional and ideological trajectories. See Maznah Mohamad, The divine bureaucracy, p. 126.

157 ‘People should be allowed to get rid of Jakim, says Dr Mahathir’, The Edge, https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/people-should-be-allowed-get-rid-jakim-says-dr-mahathir (last accessed 4 July 2022).

158 Peter Mandaville and Shadi Hamid, Islam as statecraft: How governments use religion in foreign policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution).

159 On writings about the statist ontology and racialised foundations of the international order, see Zarakol, Ayşe, ‘States and ontological security: A historical rethinking’, Cooperation and Conflict 52, 1 (2017): 48–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Getachew, Adom, Worldmaking after empire: The rise and fall of self-determination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

160 Çınar, Menderes, or, ‘Turkey's “Western” “Muslim” identity and the AKP's civilizational discourse’, Turkish Studies 19, 2 (2018): 176–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

161 Ikenberry, G. John, ‘The end of liberal international order?’, International Affairs 94, 1 (2018): 7–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.