The relation between religion and modernization in Southeast Asia is a theme of such a complex nature that a discussion of any of its various aspects would necessitate a preliminary methodological and conceptual clarification. Such a clarification is further necessitated by the fact that modernization as a historical and contemporary phenomenon has been treated by scholars from different disciplines using concepts as political modernization, economic modernization, technological modernization, military modernization, educational modernization, administrative modernization, and so forth. It becomes almost the general practice to employ the concept modernization in a diffused and ambiguous manner. The ambiguity and diffuseness of the concept lies in the fact that no distinction or differentiation is accomplished between the numerous phenomena.

In any attempt to clarify ths problems generated by the writing of history, one is always beset by the difficulty of selecting a point of departure. This is particularly the case with the study of Malaysian history, by which term I mean Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo, and the Philippines. Close as we now are to a political Malaysia, this term is used here purely in the geographical sense.