The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Several surveys conducted over the past few years by the U.S.-based Pew Research Centre show a growing appeal of Islamist extremism in Malaysia. While absolute numbers may still point to Malaysian Muslims being generally unattracted to radical notions of Islam, some figures pointing in the opposite direction appear staggeringly high when compared to similar figures for Indonesia, particularly since the general impression, in view of the greater number of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, is that Indonesian Islam is much more radical than Malaysian Islam.

These figures have in fact been quoted by several commentators as a warning against the possibility of Malaysian Muslims gravitating towards Islamist violence as manifested by the likes of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or simply the Islamic State (IS) or as Daesh, after its Arabic acronym) and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) (cf. Raj 2015, Abuza 2016). Already hundreds of Malaysians are known to have joined Katibah Nusantara, the Malay-speaking chapter of ISIS in the Middle East (Chalk 2015, pp. 10–11, Muhammad Haziq and Jasminder 2016, Farrah Naz and Aliza 2016).

Much of the statistics is surprising. For example, proportionately fewer Malaysian Muslims (8 per cent) express worry about Muslim extremist groups than do Indonesian Muslims (53 per cent); the former are concerned more, at 31 per cent, about Christian extremists. And at 18 per cent, the proportion of Malaysian Muslims approving suicide bombing as justifiable is more than double the comparable figure of their Indonesian co-religionists, which is at 7 per cent (Pew Research Center 2013a: 68–71).

A later survey put Malaysian Muslims’ support for suicide bombing as often or sometimes justified at 27 per cent, as compared with the Indonesian figure of a mere 6 per cent (Pew Research Center 2013b). More Malaysian Muslims (11 per cent) also express a favourable view of ISIS than do Indonesian Muslims (4 per cent) (Poushter 2015). It is also telling that Malaysian Muslims greatly surpass their Indonesian counterparts in messianic fervour, with 62 per cent of the former in comparison to only 23 per cent of the latter expecting the redeemer Imam al-Mahdi's advent during their lifetime (Pew Research Center 2012, p. 65).

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The economic, political, strategic and cultural dynamism in Southeast

Asia has gained added relevance in recent years with the spectacular rise of giant economies in East and South Asia. This has drawn greater attention to the region and to the enhanced role it now plays in international relations and global economics.

The sustained effort made by Southeast Asian nations since 1967 towards a peaceful and gradual integration of their economies has had indubitable success, and perhaps as a consequence of this, most of these countries are undergoing deep political and social changes domestically and are constructing innovative solutions to meet new international challenges. Big Power tensions continue to be played out in the neighbourhood despite the tradition of neutrality exercised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Trends in Southeast Asia series acts as a platform for serious analyses by selected authors who are experts in their fields. It is aimed at encouraging policy makers and scholars to contemplate the diversity and dynamism of this exciting region.

Few countries have undergone greater structural changes in recentyears in the passage from rural underdevelopment to urbanization andindustrialization than Thailand. As recently as 1980, the Thai ruralpopulation made up 82 per cent of the total population and only 15 percent lived in cities with populations larger than 50,000. The Bangkokmetropolis alone accounted for around 60 per cent of the country’s urbanpopulation.2 Rice cultivation was still dominant, and was done withlimited mechanization, using traditional technology. Today, however,large cities (especially Bangkok, and many other fast-growing centresin the central region such as Rayong) and rapidly expanding industriesdominate much of the country.The economic and demographic transformation of Thailand wasparticularly apparent from around 1986 until the early 1990s. Inaddition, despite the sharp dip caused by the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis,impressive growth continued until recently.

54. A. Karim Haji Abdullah (Abdul Karim Haji Abdulllah), ed. A. Samad Ismail: Ketokohan dan Kewartawanan. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1991. 441 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NUS.

55. A.R. Zahari (Ab. Rashid Zahari). “Abdullah Munsyi: Who was He?” Jurnal Biografi Malaysia 1 (June 2005): 48–76. NLB.

56. “A. Samad Ismail (1924–2008): Tokoh Wartawan dan Nasionalis”. In Ensiklopedia Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Melayu, vol. 1, pp. 15–16. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1994. NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

57. A. Samad Ismail (Abdul Samad Ismail). Memoir A. Samad Ismail di Singapura. Bangi, Selangor: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 1993. 275 pp. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

58. A. Samad Ismail (Abdul Samad Ismail). “Penghulu Keluarga”. Dewan Budaya 14, no. 10 (October 1992): 20–22. ISEAS, NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

59. A. Samad Ismail (Abdul Samad Ismail). “Utusan Melayu dan Saya”. In Cenderamata Genap 25 Tahun Utusan Melayu Akhbar Kebangsaan Melayu yang dipunyai dan diusahakan oleh Bangsa Melayu 29 Mei 1939– 29 Mei 1964, disusun oleh Rusdin Yaakub dan Abdul Malik Haji Abdullah, 7–23. Kuala Lumpur: Utusan Melayu Press, 1964. ISEAS, NLB.

60. A. Talib Samat. “Ahmad Lutfi: Penulis, Penerbit dan Pendakwah”. Dewan Sastera 21, no. 5 (May 1991): 89–91. NLB, NTUNIE, NUS.

61. Abd. Ghani Said (Abdul Ghani Said). “As Sayid Habib Nuh: Peranannya Tersembunyi”. In 7 Wali Melayu. Kuala Lumpur: Penerbitan Hikmah, 1993. ISEAS, NLB.

62. Abdul Aziz Bari. “Ahmad Ibrahim and the Islamization of Law in Malaysia”. In Monograph on Selected Malay Intellectuals, compiled by Mohamad @Md. Som Sujimon. Kuala Lumpur: International Islamic University Malaysia, 2003. ISEAS, NLB, NUS. (Discusses Natrah's case in Singapore).

63. Abdul Ghafar Ibrahim. “Masuri S.N. (Singapura)”. In Dialog Seniman Dunia. Shah Alam: Pustaka Dini, 2010. NLB, NTUNIE.

64. Abdul Ghani Hamid. “Masuri S.N.”. In Jati Diri: Citra Seni di Singapura = Selves: The State of the Arts in Singapore, edited by Kwok Kian Woon, Arun Mahizhnan, and T. Sasitharan. Singapore: National Arts Council, 2002. NLB, NUS.

65. “Abdul Ghani bin Abdul Hamid, Cultural Medallion Recipient, 1999, Literature”. Produced by National Library Board, Singapore, in collaboration with National Arts Council, Singapore. 2007 [released in 2009]. 1 videodisc. 18 min. NLB.

66. Abdul Halim Abdul Karim. “Haji Mohamad Sanusi Mahmood: The First Mufti of Singapore”. Paper presented at a Workshop on the Education of Southeast Asian Islamic Leadership, Singapore, 19–20 May 2005. ISEAS.

Objectives and Significance of this Bibliography

The principal aim of this Bibliography is to compile all available, useful information and resource lists about Singapore's Malay/Muslim community into one document. This will enable anyone who are keen to know about the different aspects of the community, easy access to the compilation. Like other ethnic Singaporeans living in this global city-state, Malays/ Muslims are also experiencing a rapid transformation in their lives — educationally, politically, economically, culturally and socially. It is thus important that these changes be captured and documented so that the huge reservoir of information about the various facets of their life can be preserved and made available to anyone interested, be they serious researchers and academics, or the general public.

This realization to scholastically preserve and document a bibliography about the Republic's Malay/Muslim community (which did not exist before) led to our formation of a Working Committee in the early 1990s. We met and deliberated for many months as to how best to go about researching and compiling such a bibliography. The result was the successful publication of the Singapore Malay/Muslim Community, 1819–1994: A Bibliography in 1995, by the National University Singapore (NUS).

Since then, many new materials about the community have been produced, reflecting the developments, achievements and challenges faced by the community during the last two decades or so. Hence, this latest academic enterprise by the present Editors and Compilers, the majority of whom are senior librarians who have served the national and university libraries in this Republic for many years, and a senior academic with NUS who initiated the earlier 1995 project. The objective this time around, however, was to produce a bibliography that would not only merely update the previous publication by accommodating these new materials, but also collate and expand its scope and coverage as exhaustively as possible to encompass many different sources (print or non-print materials), such as microforms, documentaries, electronic resources and other media forms. After much painstaking, three-year effort, we now see the publication of this new Bibliography — Singapore Malay/Muslim Community, 1819–2015: A Bibliography — which we believe (humbly!) to be the one and only comprehensive bibliography of its kind available anywhere.