An essential question in Malaysian Islamization raised by political leaders and
repeated in public discourse is whether the country is essentially a secular or Islamic
state . An important point here is that the state, which is often
understood to be secular in nature, is itself at the ‘forefront of the Islamization process
rejecting the logics of secularism’. Thus, the state in Malaysia is
subjected to Islamization by dakwah groups and political parties on the one hand and
from within by political elites and bureaucrats.
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