ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the cosmopolitan possibilities inherent in existing processes of identity formation and systems of ‘co-responsibility’ mainly among Malay-speaking Muslim peoples in parts of insular and peninsular Southeast Asia. With some exceptions, relations among Malaysia’s three main ethnic ‘communities’ – the Malays, Chinese and Indians – have been more or less peaceful although tensions, particularly between Malays and Chinese, have periodically become apparent. Once was during the so-called Emergency when British forces fought against the Malayan Communist Party; another during a period of Malay-Chinese tensions, when Singapore briefly joined the Federation. Many Malaysians do not see the new Islam as either cosmopolitan or inclusive because of its dedication to the suppression of what they take to be basic artistic, intellectual, personal, religious and sexual freedoms. In the late 1940s some so-called radical Malay nationalists were making out a case for a national identity based on a similarly fluid and hybridised sense of Malayness.
