The Islamic View of Entrepreneurship: Modernity and its Rewards

Abstract

To one degree or another, all of my informants were struggling with the problematic issues of the apparent contradiction between self- and group interest and between this- and other-worldly concerns. These issues underlined another contradiction which economic change had thrown into high relief: the difference between the Malay past and the Malay present, and all the complex moral responsibilities which modernity and development entail. Bolstered by the deepening sense that they represented a new group of Malay Muslim leaders (Melayu baru), my informants had begun to look back on a Malay past which was vaguely embarrassing to them, for they believed Malays once — and indeed, until quite recently — had profoundly misunderstood Allah’s intentions for men and women on earth concerning material wealth. Partly because of a misunderstanding, they reasoned, Malays had fallen far behind the more practical Chinese in their own land. When Allah asked for men and women to show humility and simplicity, he surely did not intend Muslims to live in the impoverished and backward kampung or village.