MALAYSIA
Malayness Rowena Abdul Razak
T he first thing that greets you when you pick up Dina Zaman's Malayland is a black-and-white photograph of a young Malay family on the dusty pink cover. The father is dressed in a suit, the mother, carrying a baby, is grinning, her clothes a mix of traditional and modern notes. Another child is standing in front of her parents, crossing time and space with her innocent gaze, already full of premonition and prophecy.
This is how Dina greets us in her latest piece of nonfiction unpacking Malay identity in Malaysia in the 2020s. The project emerged from the pandemic, motivated by questions about what makes Malays tick in the twenty-first century-what drives their politics, beliefs, desires and fears. Across seven chapters, she takes us through the interviews and interactions she's had, either personally or through IMAN Research, the think-tank she founded. Her range is impressive: from the rural to the urban, from different social, political and academic backgrounds. Although her book is readable and familiar, quite "come close and let me share with you, okay?", it's packed with information, research and academic rigour.
What makes the work even more potent is that she puts herself under the spotlight too. Malayland is as much a personal quest for identity as it is a community's. Another important thread is the role of Islam-how it has helped Malays, whether it has made them progress or regress, if it's a thing to celebrate or fear. As Dina discovers, it really depends who you ask. Everyone has their own unique experience and approach, but everything becomes hazy when you look at things collectively.
uite appropriately, Dina begins her exploration Q in 1998 with the arrest of Anwar Ibrahim, who was Malaysia's deputy prime minister at the time. His sacking by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and subsequent trial for sodomy shocked many. It proved to be a turning point for Malays. Dina reveals how the trial and the Reformasi movement that emerged in support of Anwar were responses to the "hedonistic" 1980s and 1990s.
She posits that Mahathir's push for bumiputera (a term used to describe Malays and other indigenous groups in the country, but dominated by Malays in practice) success resulted in progress, increased wealth and a move away from overt displays of religion towards an embrace of Western habits, especially in Kuala Lumpur: "Religious belief, national pride and personal fame were nowhere as valued as financial and material wealth." There was something quite innocent (read: ignorant) about nights spent listening to international DJs and hanging out in cool nightspots. As someone who grew up in the 1990s, I resonate with these days and nod in agreement when Dina concludes, "You'll never have the 1990s back." The Reformasi movement that followed Anwar's arrest changed everything. There was a rejection of the perceived hedonism of the KL set and a new push for "the kind of Islam that they [the more conservative Malays who'd been sidelined] thought Malaysia needed".
Here's where one might think of another revolution further east. Dina must have realised that her prologue of Malaysian Malays' move towards Islamism as a response to Westernisation and modernity is exactly what the Iranians faced in the 1970s. Many of us may be familiar with pictures of Iran before the establishment of the Islamic Republic: women in short skirts dancing the night away, men with their arms around girlfriends.
DINA ZAMAN Malayland Faction Press and Ethos Books: 2025
But the hedonism gave way to religious fervour led by Islamist leaders who felt that Iran had become "Westoxified" (to borrow the term coined by Islamic philosopher Jalal Al-Ahmad) and therefore needed to find itself again in religion. The struggle for modernity has always been a difficult one, especially for non-Western cultures. To be modern, many thought, was to be Western, resulting in a clash between traditional values and newly minted modern identities.
Dina deftly shares her personal experience of this dichotomy, as an "other"-part of the KL cool set but cognisant of the importance of tradition and culture, painfully aware of the oxymoron of being a "modern Malay" or worse (to some), a "liberal Malay". Despite Malay roots and a long history of studying Malay culture, Dina confesses that she feels like a "fish out of water" and is considered by some as "not Malay enough", looking more Chinese than Malay. She attributes this to being a Third Culture Kid-a daughter of a diplomat who lived in different countries and went to different schools. She'd witnessed the Cold War firsthand when her father was posted as a diplomat to Moscow in Soviet Russia. She humours us with tales of the omnipresent KGB, listening to Boney M in the family's Bolshaya Ordynka apartment and the opposite experience of living in the United States. There's humility in these accounts; she soberly remembers that she still had to earn her keep and place, driven by parents who didn't believe in taking anything for granted.
Throughout the book, Dina intertwines personal experience with observations of Malay cultural and political identity. Like a doctor, she keeps her index and middle fingers firmly on the Malay pulse. She has a firm bedside manner in delivering the results, critiquing rather than criticising Malay attitudes and condescension towards their own. She employs a class framework to understand why urban Malays look down on their rural cousins, seeing Islamic voters as uneducated and "kampung".
D ina tackles the idea of Malay nationalism head on. She unpacks the 2018 general elections, a key milestone that saw the defeat of Barisan Nasional (BN), the coalition that had ruled since Malaysia's independence. In its place came Pakatan Harapan (PH), led by Mahathir in a second appearance-this time alongside former rival Anwar's party. Many who were part of the anti-Mahathir Reformasi movement supported PH, sheepishly justifying Mahathir's presence as necessary for change. But where did this put the Malays?
To answer this, Dina enlists the help of academics and practitioners of Malay culture and traditions. They saw the collapse of the United Malays National Organisation (usually known as UMNO, the dominant party within the BN coalition) as an opportunity to redraw Malay identity, leading to the emergence of far-right and pro-Malay communities. It seems almost ironic that while many disliked UMNO-for their excess, corruption and the presence of political "dinosaurs"-th party's prominence had been instrumental in maintaining a kind of singular Malay identity that was moderate politically and religiously.
Their defeat in 2018 allowed those on the periphery to enter the mainstream. Previously fringe groups have their own interesting trajectories, such as one that started life as punks, then socialists and eventually ethnocentrists.
If 2018 is the midway point of a fault line that emerged in 1998, where does this leave us today? Dina seeks answers from the under-forty women she's befriended-those trying to challenge the status quo, unafraid to question the patriarchy and local interpretations of Islam. She traces the lives of women who have experienced extreme Islamist upbringings that rejected notions of Malay culture and Malaysian citizenship, seeing them as distractions from religion and an exclusively Islamic life. These women, Dina discovers, feel alienated from the box-ticking of Malaysian society, pointing to how having an Islamic identity doesn't necessarily mean being accepted as Malay.
The Malaysian Constitution states that one needs to be Muslim, speak Malay and practise Malay culture before one is recognised as Malay. But, as Dina reveals through the experience of extreme Islamists, some find themselves too Muslim to be Malay. Many Malays in Malaysia who are caught between race and religion often look to their Indonesian counterparts, envious of their ability to combine piety and culture. Why can't this happen in Malaysia? Dina is unable to provide a straightforward answer, instead giving space to her interviewees and observations. She sees some hope in the journey of Malays who are realising that they've always been mindful of their faith, quite separate from the emergence of Islamic revivalism and a growing brand of evangelical Islam. Perhaps she's telling us that there is no resolution; there is only experience.
I n Malayland, Dina sometimes questions whether she's the best person to write this book: "Who am I to speak on their-our-behalf?" The privilege of being Malay in Malaysia is a doubleedged sword-something no one really wants to admit or understand-and Dina concludes that neither Malays nor non-Malays will really be able to sympathise with her inner struggle between loving her country and feeling foreign. This is reflected in the inability of society to find a political middle ground. In Malaysia (like in many places), politics and race are highly politicised. By the end of the book, Dina admits that she doesn't really get it either and concludes that it's simply best to keep her own company. This can be a little disappointing for those of us who seek answers and resolution. One wants to feel hopeful, but it feels naïve.
I return to the start and revisit the photograph again. What was young Dina thinking as she stood by her parents and sister? Did she know of the journey ahead, imagining the community she will belong to, shaping it in her own way? There's a poignancy to the image. It's a depiction not just of Dina but also of being Malay in post-independence Malaysia. This feeling of a lost innocent time prevails in the book, with memories of sepia-coloured P. Ramlee films and the hedonistic 1990s. Dina brings a lot from her past, but she is firm in looking forward and seeking the humanness in Malaysia's obsession for categories and othering.
Rowena Abdul Razak holds a DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. She is a historical consultant on heritage projects that look at the links between Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf
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