ABSTRACT
The most significant reform that the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013–2025 (MEB) proposes is its curriculum expansion so as to enable Muslim students to better understand the core values and underlying philosophies of not only Islam but also other main religions of Malaysia. Since Islamic affairs are technically administered by the different states, the state governments have traditionally wielded considerable autonomous authority over Islamic education. The transfer of power from the Islamic-educated Abdullah Badawi to the Western-educated Najib Razak in April 2009 raised the instrumentalization of Islamic education as a political tool. The Malaysian government has undermined the civilizational qualities of a strand of moderate Islam, even as the government claims to uphold it under the tagline of wasatiyyah in many international meetings. The Malaysian government pursues an 'ethnicized neoliberalism' in its attempts to maintain economic competitiveness on a global scale whilst perpetually balancing competing interests from the different political and cultural elites and collectives in the ethno-religious landscape.
