Speaking Islamic: self-actualisation and justice in Malaysia and India

ABSTRACT This paper highlights the contingency and epistemological heterogeneity of bottom-up calls for Islamisation in Malaysia and India. Using Shahab Ahmad’s conceptualisation of Islam as a language (Islam/ic), the paper investigates the plurality of meanings grassroots actors attach to common Islamic signifiers. In the case of Malaysia, the sociopolitical context of the Islamisation race between PAS and UMNO and the institutionalisation of Islamic piety, along with the global Islamist revival, provided the platform for the emergence of fragmented new Islamic ontologies. Among these, the paper focused on ISIS supporters and sympathisers expressing claims to self-actualisation and righteousness as conservative demands for the establishment an Islamic State, implementation of Shari’a and hudud. In India, the political context of an allegedly oppressing Hindu numerical majority, the prevalence of anti-Muslim biases and socially institutionalised discrimination, and the failures of Indian secularism, provided the platform for the emergence of new Islamic ontologies. With a focus on SIMI, the paper sketched out how Islam communicates calls for justice and recognition, a re-imagination also assisted by growing international prevalence of calls for justice framed in radical Islamic terms.