Islam, Modernity and Entrepreneurship among the Malays

Rokiah and her business partner, Ishak — two ambitious Malay entrepreneurs — had been searching for an entrepreneurial venture for their new company when Arif, Rokiah’s cousin, called her with exciting news.¹ ‘We are going to make a lot of money’, he announced. ‘I have been developing a business I want you to share in. Please meet me tonight to discuss this project, but you must keep it top secret!’

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.

It might seem paradoxical that in devaluing the Malay economic past, increasingly — in the corridors of corporate power, in evocative images portrayed by government and the media, and in the ideology of modem Malay men and women now living far from the villages and small towns of their childhoods — the framing of a highly valued Malay social past is taking form. While the kampung encompassed no past economic behaviours that could be utilized in the present, and Malay feudal society had no social behaviours applicable to modern life, the kampung, now exalted as a kind of idyllic community, has, to my informants and their political leaders, instructive power in conducting modern relationships. Its norms and values are believed to be superior to those of Western societies to which modern Malays increasingly compare themselves; moreover, in its imparadisement we can find indigenous theories of ‘Malayness’ itself.

Malaysia has been given as an example of an economy dominated by a small handful of political elites in an increasingly polarized, class-based society in which the power of the state has grown simply to protect its interests (Crouch 1992). Shamsul A.B. (1986a) has argued that NEP is an elite patronage machine, in which the real beneficiary of NEP ‘poverty eradication’ programmes has been the state itself, comprised of Malay politicians and their ‘clients’. Gomez meticulously outlines how politically connected entrepreneurial groups have formed in Malaysia, demonstrating how, ‘through their abuse of the NEP and government enterprises as well as their rent-seeking activities, influential Malay politicians and a business elite with close links to UMNO leaders’ became so-called entrepreneurs (1994: 6–7). As such, modern ‘entrepreneurship’ in Malaysia is generally seen as a mere reflection of privileged political access and largely ignored.¹

CrossLinks had a somewhat dubious beginning as an enterprise, for it was started by Rokiah and her boyfriend, Ismail, in 1991 for the sole purpose of obtaining coveted ‘MITI shares’ or ‘free shares’. The Malaysian Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) allocated nearly 57,000 million shares of new publicly listed companies to over 2,100 bumiputera companies between 1991 and 1993. This programme was intended to provide an additional means to boost bumiputera ownership of the economy, one of the key components of NEP.¹ The intention of the MITI programme was to help Malay business people increase their capital base and establish a foundation for long-term growth. Companies that met certain requirements — 100 per cent bumiputera equity, 51 per cent of management and manpower classed as bumiputera, and paid-up investment capital — could register with the government to receive their special allocation of newly listed public shares. Once a bumiputera company received a letter from the Ministry that it had been awarded such shares, its owners could take the letter to a bank and receive a 100 per cent loan at very favourable terms to purchase the shares, which is why many people called them ‘free’.

Aisha and Rahim — the married co-owners of Marchland, a new manufacturing company — a photographic crew, and I drove through the streets of an upper-class community in Kuala Lumpur, stopping at a house with enormous white pillars and an elegant garden. Today they would photograph a series of magazine advertisements for Marchland at this house, which belonged to Aisha’s wealthy friend. Aisha said it was a perfect location for the advertisements because the house was elegant and modern — exactly what the advertisements were planned to show about Marchland. Like many of the newly renovated Malay houses in Kuala Lumpur, it boasted a patio surrounded by columns. French doors, a waterfall fountain in the garden, and a stained-glass window in the entrance.

I had been interviewing Zaman and his brothers about the trio of interrelated entrepreneurial companies they owned — a computer firm, an office-machinery firm, and an office-furniture firm — when I discovered, almost by chance, that they had a significant interest in another company, Amanah Anak-Anak Melayu — the Malay Children’s Trust. Zaman told me this company was still in the planning phase and therefore remained under a veil of secrecy. But he none the less agreed to introduce me to its director, his close friend Halim, under the condition that if Halim were willing to openly discuss the Amanah, they would as well. My curiosity was piqued, for despite the reticence Zaman felt, I could not help but hear the pride in his and his brothers’ voices when they spoke of this business alliance. Halim, it turned out, was more than willing to meet me, and we were ultimately to spend a great deal of time together. I was fortunate to have entered the ambit of Zaman and Halim’s network at a crucial moment — precisely when their entrepreneurial alliance, the Amanah, was about to bear fruit. As with Aisha and Rahim and their company Marchland, this venture had been conceived, planned, financed, and organized; now, it was ready to begin operations. Moreover, like CrossLinks and Marchland, the success of the business would depend wholly upon the networking ability of its principals.

The episodes of entrepreneurship and alliance which I have described in the previous chapters provide some insight into the diverse economic opportunities which are generated and pursued by Malay entrepreneurs in the enriched landscape of modern development in Malaysia. Yet, despite the differences in the enterprises of CrossLinks, Marchland, and the Amanah, certain similarities appear in the case studies, characteristic of Malay entrepreneurial ideology as a whole: the claim that in development, duty to others must be stated and shown; the belief that one must not seek greedily the fruits of success but must generously invite others to partake; the insistence that entailments — be they profits, contacts, or opportunities — must be rightfully earned through effort, sincerity, and hard work; and, perhaps most crucial of all, the perception that the entrepreneur is the cornerstone of modernity, possessing the ability to transform simultaneously both society and the economy into the image of development espoused by the Malay Muslim doctrine of virtue and the Mahathir government.