Islam in the history of Malay literature: a preliminary discussion / Mohd Zariat Abdul Rani

The history of the Malay world details the exposure and acceptance of foreign influences. After the practice of ancestor worship and Animism, Malays then accepted Hinduism, which introduced them to polytheistic and superstitious beliefs. After the arrival of Islam, however, polytheism was replaced by the concept of Tawhid, the acknowledgement of the primacy of a monotheistic God, which also had the effect of jettisoning superstition. Islam was, in turn, challenged by the arrival of external forces, most significantly by the Western worldview; this introduced secularism by way of the colonisation of the Malay archipelago. This brief chronological account is vital, since the range of each distinct cultural influence denote four distinct cultural stages in the history of the Malay world: the Animistic, the Hinduistic, the Islamic, and the Western colonisation periods.1 Naturally, each stage exerted its own pull on various aspects of Malay culture, particularly on the local literature, which will be the focus of this article. It is interesting to note that most Western scholars are seemingly inclined to emphasize the significance of each period on Malay culture and literature save for the Islamic. To explain this statement, the views of some Western scholars will be gleaned over in the following section. (Copied from article)