{"id":6019,"date":"2013-03-29T02:14:18","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T02:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/?page_id=6019"},"modified":"2015-05-07T02:15:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T02:15:05","slug":"malaysia-well-placed-for-intercivilisational-dialogue-ukm-don","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/archive\/year-2013\/march-2013\/malaysia-well-placed-for-intercivilisational-dialogue-ukm-don\/","title":{"rendered":"Malaysia Well Placed For Intercivilisational Dialogue, UKM Don"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main \"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">0<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ukm.my%2Fnews%2Farchive%2Fyear-2013%2Fmarch-2013%2Fmalaysia-well-placed-for-intercivilisational-dialogue-ukm-don%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/?p=6019&amp;via=https:\/\/twitter.com\/ukmtwit\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-toggle-container\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div id=\"midblock\">\n<div class=\"insidem\">\n<div class=\"news_item_a\">\n<div class=\"newsitem_tools\">\n<div class=\"newsitem_info\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"createdate\">FRIDAY, 29 MARCH 2013 08:37<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"newsitem_text\">\n<div class=\"news_item_article\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"border\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/images\/stories\/Campus2013\/tamadun%20main.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>By Saiful Bahri Kamaruddin<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Pix Izwan Azman<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">BANGI, 27 March 2013 \u2013\u00a0Malaysia is historically very well placed to engage in intercivilisational dialogue despite experiencing racial and religious friction in recent times.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Institute of Occidental\u00a0 Studies (IKON) of The National University of Malaysia (UKM) Principal Fellow, Professor Dr Shanta Nair-Venugopal said Malaysia\u2019s capacity for cultural dialogue is the outcome of the Malay Peninsula being historically a meeting point for Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian influences.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Delivering her inaugural public lecture on <em>The Discourse of<\/em> <em>Occidental Studies: A Perspective from Malaysia<\/em>, here today, she said Malaysian scholars are well versed in such cultural interactions, having studied the relations between the East and West closely for many years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Prof Shanta said Malaysia in particular and Asia in general is resurfacing prominently in the role of a bridge between cultures, partly because Occidentalists are predicting that the East will be better off than the West in the near future.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The\u00a0 peninsula, like many lands in the Orient had been colonised and de-colonised by Western powers, giving the possibility that Asians can be cosmopolitan or savvy about western affairs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">She said despite western interest in the cultures of the East, we have the potential to know better about them because of the political, trade and cultural interactions over hundreds of years. Globalisation has made western norms and cultures more accessible.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Studying about western ways and thinking will give Malaysia an advantage over other neighbouring countries which may have a narrower view of the Occident.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Studying western behaviour and trying to anticipate how westerners react to cultures other than their own is nothing new in this part of the world.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There were those in the Malay Peninsula who took a negative view of the western world, while others might have mixed representations of the Occident i.e. both good and bad to emerge from the west.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Among the Malays of the early modern era, it has been suggested that Abdullah Munshi, the scribe and author who worked for Sir Stamford Raffles, was an Occidentalist. Those familiar with his autobiography <em>Hikayat Abdullah<\/em> would notice that he almost always praised the Europeans he writes for. Abdullah\u2019s critics call him a Western apologist because of this.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In more contemporary times, Prof Syed Hussein Alatas\u00a0wrote about the absurdity of the British i.e. Westerners who looked down on the \u201cnatives\u201d or Malays for supposedly being backward.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"border\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/images\/stories\/Campus2013\/tamadun1.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"border\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/images\/stories\/Campus2013\/tamadun2.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\nIn his highly acclaimed work <em>The Myth of the Lazy<\/em> <em>Nativ<\/em>e, he demolished the assertion by pointing out that perceived lack of\u00a0Malay interest in working for the British was actually a form of passive resistance to British rule.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Another form of Malaysian Occidentalism emerged with a suggestion by former Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad that Malaysians \u201cinvestigate\u201d the West instead of being the subject of research by Westerners.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Prof Shanta said Tun Dr Mahathir\u2019s own \u201cLook East\u201d policy is interpreted as a form of Occidentalism in which the Western model is renounced in favour of Japan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">His \u201cLook East\u201d policy complemented the other form of Occidentalism: the \u201cBuy British Last\u201d policy in the 1980s and early 1990 \u2013 sparked off by the London Stock Exchange amending its trading rules in the wake of the \u201cdawn raid\u201d takeover by Malaysia of the British-owned Malaysian plantation group Guthrie. The policy was largely prompted by the British media\u2019s and the LSE\u2019s hostile reaction to the takeover. Later in the 1990s the British media urged Whitehall to investigate allegations of corruption in the sale of arms to Malaysia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Prof Shanta\u00a0was previously professor in language studies (sociolinguistics and intercultural communication) in the School of Language Studies and Linguistics (SoLLs), UKM. Currently engaged in interdisciplinary work, she taught, supervised and examined undergraduates and graduates in English language studies for more than thirty years.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">She graduated from Universiti Malaya in 1972 with an honours degree in English and was awarded a Master degree in 1984. In 1997 she completed her PhD in sociolinguistics at the University of Wales, Cardiff.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">She specialises in Sociolinguistics, Language and intercultural communication, Business discourse and English in the local and global context.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"border\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/images\/stories\/Icon\/ukmnewsportal.png\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"border\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/images\/stories\/Campus2013\/tamadun3.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"leftblock\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FRIDAY, 29 MARCH 2013 08:37 By Saiful Bahri Kamaruddin Pix Izwan Azman BANGI, 27 March 2013 \u2013\u00a0Malaysia is historically very<a class=\"tukm-readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/archive\/year-2013\/march-2013\/malaysia-well-placed-for-intercivilisational-dialogue-ukm-don\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6020,"parent":1182,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6019","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6019"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6022,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6019\/revisions\/6022"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ukm.my\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}