Politics of Malaysia takes place in the framework of a federal representative democratic constitutional monarchy, in which the Yang di-Pertuan Agong is head of state and the Prime Minister of Malaysia is the head of government. Executive power is exercised by the federal government and the 13 state governments. Legislative power is vested in the federal parliament and the 13 state assemblies. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature, though the executive maintains a certain level of influence in the appointment of judges to the courts.
Sharia is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition based on scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and this referencing is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its interpretations by Islamic scholars. Fiqh, practical application side of sharia in a sense, was elaborated over the centuries by legal opinions issued by qualified jurists and sharia has never been the sole valid legal system in Islam historically; it has always been used alongside customary law from the beginning, and applied in courts by ruler-appointed judges, integrated with various economic, criminal and administrative laws issued by Muslim rulers.
The Islamization of Knowledge is a conceptual framework that originates from Islamic philosophy, advocating for the integration of Islamic teachings with modern academic disciplines, such as the social sciences, management sciences, humanities, sciences, engineering, and technology. This model posits that all knowledge and science should be consistent with the principles of Islam, aiming to foster a holistic understanding of the world through an Islamic worldview.
A madhhab refers to any school of thought within Islamic jurisprudence.
The European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR) is a Dublin-based private foundation, founded in London on 29–30 March 1997 on the initiative of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe. The council is a largely self-selected body, composed of Islamic clerics and scholars, presided over by Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Ziauddin Sardar is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and science and cultural relations. He wrote or edited more than 50 books Prospect magazine named him as one of Britain's top 100 public intellectuals and The Independent newspaper called him: 'Britain's own Muslim polymath'.
Abdulaziz Sachedina is Professor and International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) Chair in Islamic Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
A mujaddid, is an Islamic term for one who brings "renewal" to the religion. According to the popular Muslim tradition, it refers to a person who appears at the turn of every century of the Islamic calendar to revitalize Islam, cleansing it of extraneous elements and restoring it to its pristine purity. In contemporary times, a mujaddid is looked upon as the greatest Muslim of a century.
Ahl-i Hadith is a Salafi reform movement that emerged in North India in the mid-nineteenth century from the teachings of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid, Syed Nazeer Husain and Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan. It is an offshoot of the 19th-century Indian Tariqah-i Muhammadiya movement tied to the 18th-century traditions of Shah Waliullah Dehlawi and the Wahhabi movement. The adherents of the movement described themselves variously as "Muwahideen" and as "Ahl e-Hadith."
Contemporary Islamic philosophy revives some of the trends of medieval Islamic philosophy, notably the tension between Mutazilite and Asharite views of ethics in science and law, and the duty of Muslims and role of Islam in the sociology of knowledge and in forming ethical codes and legal codes, especially the fiqh and rules of jihad.
Reformasi is a political movement in Malaysia. It was initiated in September 1998 by Anwar Ibrahim, former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, after he was sacked from his position by Malaysia's then-Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad. The movement, which began while the country hosted the Commonwealth Games, initially demanded the resignation of Malaysia's then-Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, and for the end of the Barisan Nasional-led (BN) government. It later became a reformist movement demanding social equality and social justice in Malaysia. The movement consisted of civil disobedience, demonstrations, sit-ins, rioting, occupations and online activism.
Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centered on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad, the religion's founder. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number approximately 1.9 billion worldwide and are the world's second-largest religious population after Christians.
Syed Abul Hasan Ali Hasani Nadwi was a leading Islamic scholar, thinker, writer, preacher, reformer and a Muslim public intellectual of 20th century India and the author of numerous books on history, biography, contemporary Islam, and the Muslim community in India, one of the most prominent figure of Deoband School. His teachings covered the entire spectrum of the collective existence of the Muslim Indians as a living community in the national and international context. Due to his command over Arabic, in writings and speeches, he had a wide area of influence extending far beyond the Sub-continent, particularly in the Arab World. During 1950s and 1960s he stringently attacked Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism as a new jahiliyyah and promoted pan-Islamism. He began his academic career in 1934 as a teacher in Nadwatul Ulama, later in 1961; he became Chancellor of Nadwa and in 1985, he was appointed as Chairman of Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
Secularism—that is, the separation of religion from civic affairs and the state—has been a controversial concept in Islamic political thought, owing in part to historical factors and in part to the ambiguity of the concept itself. In the Muslim world, the notion has acquired strong negative connotations due to its association with removal of Islamic influences from the legal and political spheres under foreign colonial domination, as well as attempts to restrict public religious expression by some secularist nation states. Thus, secularism has often been perceived as a foreign ideology imposed by invaders and perpetuated by post-colonial ruling elites, and is frequently understood to be equivalent to irreligion or anti-religion.
Anwar bin Ibrahim is a Malaysian politician who has served as the tenth Prime Minister of Malaysia since 2022. He served as the 12th and 16th Leader of the Opposition from 2008 to 2015 and again from 2020 to 2022. He has been the chairman of the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition since 2020, the second President of the People's Justice Party (PKR) since 2018 and the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tambun since November 2022. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister and in many other Cabinet positions in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad from 1982 to his removal in 1998.
Kamarudin bin Jaffar is a Malaysian politician who served as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for the second term in the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration under former Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob and former Minister Saifuddin Abdullah from August 2021 to the collapse of the BN administration in November 2022 and the first term in the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration under former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and former Minister Hishammudin Hussein from March 2020 to the collapse of the PN administration in August 2021, Member of Parliament (MP) for Bandar Tun Razak from May 2018 to November 2022, Deputy Minister of Transport in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration under former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and former Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook from July 2018 to the collapse of the PH administration in February 2020 and MP for Tumpat from November 1999 to May 2018. He is a member of the Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU), a component party of the PN coalition and was a member of the People's Justice Party (PKR), a component party of the PH coalition, Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), a former component party of the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) and Barisan Alternatif (BA) coalitions and United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.
Ismaʻīl Rājī al-Fārūqī was a Palestinian-American philosopher. He spent several years at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, then taught at universities in North America, including McGill University in Montreal. He was Professor of Religion at Temple University, where he founded and chaired the Islamic Studies program. Al-Faruqi was also the founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought. He wrote over 100 articles for various scholarly journals and magazines in addition to 25 books, of the most notable being Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of Its Dominant Ideas. He also established the Islamic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion and chaired it for ten years. He served as the vice-president of the Inter-Religious Peace Colloquium, The Muslim-Jewish-Christian Conference and as the president of the American Islamic College in Chicago.
Mona Abul-Fadl (1945-2008) was a scholar of contemporary Western thought and women's studies. She was associated with the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and later with what is now known as Cordoba University. Her research interests included political theory, comparative politics, Islam and the Middle East, epistemology, and feminist scholarship.
Jasser Auda is a scholar and distinguished professor of Islamic law, in particular, the study of the higher purposes or maqasid of the Sharia. He is the President of Maqasid Institute Global, which is a think tank registered in the United States, United Kingdom, Malaysia and Indonesia, and has educational and research programs in a number of countries.
