Islamic Revivalism in Malaysia

This thesis seeks to examine the response and reaction of the non-Muslims in Kuala Lumpur towards elements of Islam in Malaysia. It also seeks to analyse the reasons behind their acceptance and rejection of Islam in Malaysia. Therefore, the nature of the study is analytical, exploratory and comparative study. The objective of the study was to gather as much as possible information relevant to the research questions within the limited resources and time frame. While there have been studies and numerous articles written about Islamic revivalism in Malaysia, they do not fully take into consideration the reaction of the multi-religious society or to be more precise, the non-Muslim communities. The state's efforts on behalf of religion in education, administration, economy, Islamic law, Islamic revivalism itself, and overall the assumption of the establishment of an Islamic state have contributed to a great anxiety about Islam among non-Muslims.

Since no major sociological study has been carried out to examine the responses of non-Muslims, this study will help to formulate a general idea of understanding the feelings and needs of non-Muslims among policy makers and actors of Islamic revivalism in implementing Islamic values. Lessons from this study could help contribute to peaceful co-existence among Muslim and non-Muslim. Since the political, social, economic, and educational policies have greatly influenced the nature of relations of Muslim and non-Muslims, recent developments have shown that there has been a profound desire from both sides to eliminate religious passions, sentiments and prejudices responsible in bringing about enmity and conflict. The finding of this study could be used to minimize those negative elements and further create understanding on the root causes of the problem.

The sample in this study was a non-Muslim group in the Lembah Pantai Parliamentary Constituency (Kuala Lumpur). The Lembah Pantai was chosen because ethnically, the population of Kuala Lumpur had been dominated by the non-Malays. Now, the population of Kuala Lumpur has changed drastically in favour of the Malays. Not a single constituency in Malaysia represents this pattern of drastic demographic changes. The non-Muslims in this constituency mainly consist of three main ethnic groups, namely Chinese, Indians and Sikhs. It is impossible to draw the whole non-Muslim's population to participate in this study. Therefore, the sample frame was identified. What we meant by sample frame here was the method of listing the group under study which was drawn from the Lembah Pantai Parliamentary Constituency. From it a random sample was drawn. Compared to other sampling frames such as asking people in the street or looking for a group of non-Muslims in one place (praying or celebrating religious festivals), this kind of listing is more convenient because it is officially listed. This official list provided us with a list of non-Muslim voters of Lembah Pantai Parliamentary Constituency.

To improve the quality of the sample, the author has tried to arrange the non-Muslim groups with the right balance so that these group would appear in the sample in the same proportions as they are found in the total population under study. This is called a stratified sample. First we choose only non-Muslim voters from the list. The list of Muslim voters was set aside. Compared to simple random sampling and systematic sampling, stratified sampling produces "…a greater degree of representativeness" and furthermore "…decreasing the probable sampling error". This study is an attempt to find out something about a whole group (non-Muslims, i.e. the Chinese, Indians, and Sikhs) on the basis of an investigation into a small selection or sample. This method is a source of strength because it allows general statements to be made about large groups after studying only a small or reasonable proportion of their members. Nevertheless, the sample survey is also a source of weakness because there is always a risk that the sample chosen might not be truly representative of the group as a whole. This problem can be solved by carefully choosing the sampling techniques. We tried to make the sample frame represent the whole population from which it is drawn. Therefore, the validity of the research findings will be linked directly to the level of representativeness of the sample.

This research also is a case study. The unit case is a community. Yin defines case study as "an empirical inquiry that:- investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when - the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident…and in which - multiple sources of evidence are used". The point of this case study is to explore the non-Muslim response to the elements of Islam in Malaysia through one good example. If for instance we wanted to understand the feelings of the Malaysian non-Muslims on aspects of Islam in Malaysia, we might take a single population (in this case, Lembah Pantai Constituency population) and examine it in detail - rather than look at a number of different populations (the population in the whole constituencies). Assuming we were right in believing that all Malaysian non-Muslims own similar responses, we could learn about them as easily from one example as many. From this we can reasonably make generalizations. According to Platt case studies can legitimately be used in reaching generalizations by various ways.

In order to fulfil the objectives of the study, this research chose the simple random sampling procedure. Using a sample of a population is necessary when we are unable to cover an entire population. It would be impossible with a limited and a restricted budget to examine all the population. Therefore the necessity of sampling could overcome those problems. Birley and Moreland state that "…to focus on a small sample of such institutes is representative of the whole population." Of course this is not always true. From the methodological perspective, this method of sampling was chosen because the non-Muslim populations in Kuala Lumpur were identical in the respect of electoral qualifications in accordance with the Malaysian Electoral Commission requirements. It is almost impossible to find a population that is identical in all respects of demographic characteristics, attitudes, experiences, and behaviours. By applying the random sampling, every ethnic community has an equal chance of being chosen and therefore, all ethnic communities were represented in the sample.

Both primary (qualitative and quantitative) and secondary (documents) techniques and procedures were used to gather the data and information. As an analytical and exploratory study, the purpose was to gather information relevant to the research questions. The relations between qualitative and quantitative methods are quite close. In fact, both qualitative and quantitative approaches are complementary rather than competitive methods. In other word, qualitative and quantitative involve numbers and words, qualitative is words and quantitative is numbers. Similarly, Blaxter, Hughes and Tight suggested that "…qualitative data may be quantified, and quantitative data qualified". To describe phenomena, quantitative approaches use numbers, while qualitative data procedures use narrative and descriptive descriptions. A combination of methods of inquiry would give more advantage than using only one method. By combining both quantitative and qualitative data, this would provide a greater understanding of the explored research issues. Survey questionnaire data (quantitative) and interview data (qualitative) provides cross data validity and richer detail of information. Thus, it contributes a greater confidence to research outcomes and analysis.