Abstract—In Malaysia (known as Malaya or Federation of
Malay States before 1963), Malay people can be considered as
indigenous. Malaya had been colonized for more than 400
years since the colonization of Portuguese in 1511. At one time,
some of the scholars especially the colonials described Malay as
lazy people or not progressive. But most of the things changed
once Malaya achieved independence in 1957 and those
achievement were associated with nationalism. Apart from
nationalism, transformation of Malay society was one of
critical factors that led to Malaya independence in 1957. It was
hard to gain independence if Malay society especially during
the early period of pre-independence did not transform from a
native that considered lazy and came from poor family as
pictured by foreign researcher and scholars to an active and
vocal community. But what were the factors that contributed
towards the transformation of Malay society. Thus in this
paper, the researcher found the early process of
transformation that happened to Malay society until 1941. At
the same time, this paper discovered the importance of
newspapers those days especially Al-Imam which was
published from 1906 to 1908 in shifting the people’s paradigm
towards Malay transformation. This research also discovered
“who’s who” related to Al-Imam that the writer feels had
contributed to the development of early newspapers in
Malaysia. “Product” of transformation amongst Malay also
discussed in this research especially prominent personalities in
journalism and radicals. Factors led to the emergence of those
kinds of personalities including education also included in this
I. MALAY SOCIETY: EARLY SCENARIO
During the last four to five centuries, foreign observers
have held definite opinions about the Malays. Those
opinions were directly formulated, without ambiguity. The
Malays themselves had also an opinion on what they were,
but that was not directly expressed. The Malay historical
sources do not concern themselves with the problem.
Nevertheless from them we can infer how the Malays think
of themselves, their duties, their values and their culture as a
whole. But foreign sources are full of accounts of the Malays.
One of the best sources on Malay attributed to Sir Thomas
Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore and British
Lieutenant Governor of Java and Bengkulen, had his first
contact with the Malays in Malacca when he became Agent
for the Governor-General in 1810 (SH Alatas, 1977: 38). It
can be suggested that the study of the national character of
the Malays had in Raffles a significant pioneer, despite the
shortcomings of his method and conclusions judged by
modern scientific standard. According to Raffles the Malays
did not achieve a high intellectual stage of development. He
was particularly interested in the maritime codes of the
Malays and their legal institutions. It was the absence of a
well-defined and generally accepted system of law which
according to Raffles was the greatest influence in the
deterioration of the Malay character (Ibid).
II ROLE OF AL-IMAM IN MALAY SOCIETY, 1906 -
1908
Malay language newspaper actually is relatively young
compared to English language newspaper and Chinese
newspaper in Malaysia (Lent, 1982). If government gazette
hailed as first newspaper in English and Chinese monthly,
Malay newspapers owes its beginning to the locally-born
Indian Muslims of Singapore, which called Jawi Peranakan
published in 1889 in Singapore. But in the whole Nusantara
(Malay Archipelago), the first newspaper was Soerat Kabar
Bahasa Melaijoe which was published in 1856 in Surabaya
Indonesia (Ahmat Adam, 1992). The writer point of view,
the first newspaper in Malaya (peninsular) should be
attributed to Seri Perak, which was published in 1893 in
Taiping, Perak since Perak is one of states in Peninsular
Malaysia. Back to the point of Jawi Peranakan, it was locally
born offspring of unions between indigenous Malay women
and South Indian Muslim traders. In late 1876, this group
formed and association in Singapore, which in turn published
a weekly called Jawi Peranakan (Lent, 1977: 258) A writer
of the time described Jawi Peranakan as having a circulation
of 250 by 1880, “ably and punctually edited, having with
only one exception, been issued consistently on the day on
which it professes to come out” (Abu Bakar, 1991). The
paper was also responsible for spawning other newspapers
during that time most of the periodicals were hand
lithographed weeklies modeled initially after English
language newspaper and later using Egyptian and Arabic
news content. The result was that the most of the content did
not relate to the Malay community. In July 1906, the mood
of the Malay journalism began to change with the
appearance of Al-Imam (Ibid).
Al-Imam was a monthly periodical published by a group
radical Muslims in Singapore in 1906 (Ibid: 1). Those
responsible for the edition and publication of the journal
were mostly educated in the Middle East particularly in those
parts of the world that, according to certain sources, they
began to observe, and subsequently became interested in the
Fundamentalist movement first founded by Muhammad bin
Abdul Wahab (1703-1791) in Arabia. They were also
inspired by the revolutionary ideology of Pan Islamism