Character and Scholarship

Author: Syed Hussein Alatas

Publisher: Budhi & Ilmu Mandiri

ISBN: 9789811813375

Size: 25cm x 17.5cm

Weight: 0.054g

Pages: 17pp

Year: 2021

An intellectual creation is never neutral. One aspect that needs a closer examination is how character traits influence one's scholarship. Using the example of philosopher David Hume's caricature on Islam and Prophet Muhammad, as well as a reviewer's criticism on his work, The Myth of the Lazy Native, Syed Hussein Alatas argues how certain character structures do not fuse well with accumulated knowledge, and scholars or thinkers sometimes make judgments in opposition to the principles of objectivity that they uphold.

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Raden Adjeng Kartini: Pemberdayaan Dengan Nurani

Author: Dr Azhar Ibrahim

Publisher: Budhi

ISBN: 9789811817366

Size: 25cm x 17.5cm

Weight: 0.085g

Pages: 32pp

Year: 2021

Salah seorang tokoh penting yang menyuarakan isu hak dan pemberdayaan wanita di dalam masyarakat Jawa zaman kolonial ialah Raden Adjeng Kartini yang hidup pada abad ke-19. Namun, gagasan dan pemikiran beliau menjangkaui persoalan wanita. Azhar Ibrahim meringkaskan tema-tema besar yang disentuh oleh Kartini melalui surat-surat dan catatan beliau, termasuk di dalam persoalan pendidikan, tradisi, agama, seni dan sastera. Kritik Kartini terhadap golongan penjajah dan bangsawan menunjukkan tekadnya untuk mencerahkan dan memandirikan bangsanya di tengah-tengah dominasi dan kemunduran sosial.

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Nation-Building Through Historical Narration

Author: Zawiah Yahya

Publisher: Budhi & Ilmu Mandiri

ISBN: 

Size: 25cm x 17.5cm

Weight: 0.054g

Pages: 22pp

Year: 2021

History, like nation-building, is a construct. It can be used as part of the national agenda to build a nation. History textbooks then become an important and effective apparatus for creating a shared narrative for citizens. As a result, one cannot divorce history as a subject in national curriculum from national political agenda. In this paper, Zawiah Yahya examines the provisional, relative and plural perspectives in historical writings and calls for the pondering over the nation's collective memory in a critical and comparative way.

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The Malays In Multi-Religious ASEAN: Protecting Identity, Upholding Integrity

Author: Chandra Muzaffar

Publisher: Budhi & Ilmu Mandiri

ISBN: 

Size: 25cm x 17.5cm

Weight: 0.054g

Pages: 55pp

Year: 2021

In this paper, delivered as the Inaugural Syed Hussein Alatas Memorial Lecture, Chandra Muzaffar explores two key concepts - identity and integrity - and their interface in Malay society. Generally, the Malay identity has been all-encompassing and a reason why a multi-ethnic Malaysia could survive and flourish. At the same time, the Malays are aware that integrity is a moral imperative. Malays relate to issues of integrity as part of identity through both the philosophical dimension and in the examples of personalities who uphold integrity. However, there were episodes in Malaysian history that saw a conflict between identity and integrity, such as the corruption case involving Bank Rakyat in the 1970s. In more recent times, the 1MDB scandal had brought the issue of integrity to the fore and caused the seismic political event on the 9th of May 2018's Malaysian general election. That day saw the people voting for integrity and against the manipulation of identity and crude appeal to ethnicity and religion. Integrity therefore, is identity and there could be no identity without integrity.