(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
In 1976, Mahathir wrote the book Menghadapi cabaran, published by a publisher much
associated with UMNO, Pustaka Antara. The book was than translated into English 10 years
after with the title The challenge published by Pelanduk Publications. The challenge,
although subdued in its public consciousness, is a significant repository of the ideas of
Mahathir since the Malay dilemma. It spells out a reemphasis on Malay identity and Malay
nationhood, and the Malay future. It was the precursor to his 2003 landmark speech, his last
as UMNO president, titled ‘Future Threats.’
Khoo Boo Teik argues that if The Malay dilemma “sought to life the deadweight of the past,
The challenge strove to provide the bearings of the future.” In the Introduction to The
challenge, Mahathir speaks in the language troubled by history, of the past ‘missed’ by the
Malays:
...one of the saddest ironies of recent times is that Islam, the faith that once made its
followers progressive and powerful, is being invoked to promote retrogression which
will bring in its wake weakness and eventual collapse. A force for enlightenment, it is
being turned into a rationale for narrow-mindedness; an inspiration towards unity, it is
being twisted into an instrument of division and destruction (Introduction)
A more detached observer might be prepared to discover in the emergence of these ‘radical,’
‘retreatist,’ and ‘obscurantist’ tendencies in Islam in Malaysia signs of a ‘reflowering of
Islam’ in Malay social and cultural life. Khoo Book Teik sees Mahathir as taking a different
view of the emergence of doctrinaire and obscurantist Islam among Malay students,
intellectual, government officers, and in the rural stronghold of PAS.
The Challenge saw in the ‘radical’ tendency the failure to realize- at best because of genuine
confusion – that ‘a balance cannot be attained between spirituality and materialism’
(Mahathir, 1986: p.74) by which it meant an incompatibility between ‘Islamic spirituality’
(Ibid., p.73) and the ‘socialist and communist ideologies...[which] are based on materialism’
(Ibid., p. 113) Against the demands of ‘socialist and communist ideologies’ for ‘material
equality’ (Ibid., p. 62), it contended that these had nothing in common with the ‘equality and
brotherhood...not in material wealth but in religion’ (Ibid., p. 65) that existed ‘in a staunchly
Muslim society’ (Ibid.). Based on the chapters ‘Materialism and Spirituality’ (pp. 56-82) and
‘Spirituality and the Modern Challenge’ (pp.104-16) in The challenge, Khoo Boo Teik sums
up Dr.Mahathir’s case against socialism(1995:p.38). Dr. Mahathir argues that:
The materialistic motivation as found in a socialist society is not part of Islamic
philosophy. Equality in property is not the basis of justice and brotherhood in Islam.
Possession of property is not equal in a Muslim society and there is no demand that all
Muslims should own property of the same value (Mahathir, 1986:p.64).
Later in The Challenge, Mahathir says that ‘Islam has never urged the rejection of worldly
wealth.’ (p. 107).Subtly resonating European history and Western philosophies, Dr. Mahathir
makes his point in that
the choice before the upholders of spirituality is not between rejecting and accepting
the world and its wealth. The world and its wealth and a myriad social activities will
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