Islamic and local knowledge on social work in Malaysia and Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Professional social work emerged on the basis of secular and Eurocentric worldview in the West in the late 19th century. As emerging nations in the 1940s, Asian Muslims were not spared being colonized in ways more than just physical presence by foreign powers. This article describes briefly how professional social work entered Malaysia and Bangladesh. The focus is to show how Western-based social work knowledge influenced the respective curriculums in the two mentioned countries. Muslims, in terms of knowledge and their religion of Islam have not made an imprint on the body of knowledge in social work. With the current ongoing discourses on the definition of social work, this article presents how Islam and local knowledge can play a mainstream role in questioning the colonial assumptions inherent in much accepted social work knowledge. While there are similarities between Western and Islamic values in reference to helping, there are also differences in which the latter is more suitable for the local population. Therefore, this article is also an initiative to start a dialog and a determined effort toward putting Islamic and local knowledge as a part of social work curricula and practice in Malaysia and Bangladesh.