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Reposted by Amrita Malhi

M @munira.bsky.social · Mar 1

1/9: I'm really pleased that my research on the 2024 Ulu Tiram incident has been published by CTC at Westpoint. This was comprehensive, meticulous work that culminated in an analysis that feels truly rewarding. The case reveals a troubling pattern: ctc.westpoint.edu/the-may-2024...

The May 2024 Ulu Tiram Attack: Islamic State Extremism, Family Radicalization, Doomsday Beliefs, and Off-the-Grid Survivalism in Malaysia - Combating Terrorism Center at West Point

Abstract: The May 17, 2024, Ulu Tiram attack in Malaysia offers a nuanced case study of radicalization, revealing the complex psychological and ideological mechanisms that transform individual belief ...

ctc.westpoint.edu

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Jan 14

And here's another, on Kedah's campaign to re-take Penang based on "20,000 archival documents" dating back to the East India Company's arrival there in 1786. It's less important whether the documents prove Kedah's point in court. What matters most is public opinion
fulcrum.sg/after-langka...

After Langkasuka Project Failure, Sanusi Takes Another Punt at Penang | FULCRUM

Kedah’s Chief Minister Sanusi Nor has sought to blame his state’s current financial woes on historical wrongs that need to be righted. But he has other motivations too.

fulcrum.sg

Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Jan 5

In another, I looked at a separate by-election in Sungai Bakap, Penang, where Madani barely mustered the energy to counter PAS, and lost badly. I also look at the narratives PAS has been building around who is - and isn't - a "true" or deserving citizen

PAS’ Contentious Contention: Non-Malay Voters Should Stay Home | FULCRUM

PAS has made the contention that it won the recent by-election in Sungai Bakap because non-Malay voters ‘supported’ the party by staying at home and not voting. To some, this beggars be…

fulcrum.sg

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Jan 5

This essay follows others I've recently published on the ISEAS blog Fulcrum. In one, I looked at a recent by-election in Nenggiri, Kelantan, and how Malaysia's Madani coalition forces approached the question of countering the Islamist party PAS

Barisan Nasional’s Win in Nenggiri: A Tactical Victory | FULCRUM

Pakatan Harapan and Barisan Nasional’s victory in the Nenggiri by-election highlights both their strengths and weaknesses.

fulcrum.sg

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Jan 5

I argue it's not just a good exhibition - and it is pretty good - but it also reflects a set of choices commonly faced in public affairs and strategic communications: Do you spend your resources rebutting your opponents, or do you create alternative discussions to crowd them out?

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Jan 5

I have a new essay on @thediplomat.com, reviewing the MADANI exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, sponsored by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and created by his former adviser, British futurist Ziauddin Sardar
#Malaysia

Anwar Ibrahim’s ‘Postnormal Times MADANI Exhibition’ Aims to Change Malaysia’s Conversation

The Kuala Lumpur exhibition challenges the exclusionary narratives advanced by the Malay right-wing. But are the country’s two political camps talking past each other?

aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

Oh, and I once wrote about how the subaltern politics of the Malay #Hikayat Pelanduk Jenaka subvert the state-centric “lessons” of the Hikayat Hang Tuah. That article isn’t available online, but I’ll likely upload it somewhere in due course

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

I have lots more work in progress and I’ll share it when it’s ready. I also have a Substack newsletter where I discuss what I’m doing (and reading) in more detail as I go along. You can subscribe if you like
amritamalhi.substack.com/publish/home

Sign in to Amrita Malhi’s Substack

amritamalhi.substack.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

One attempt could have included classifying us by “ethnicity” – but the govt changed its mind after my article appeared online! 🤔 Again, drawing on colonial Malaya, I analysed new classification tech and argued it's informed by raciology. Soon, it will use #AI www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Enumerating Australia’s “diverse”: ethnicity and raciology in census and workplace diversity surveys

The Australian Government has announced that from 2026, the nation’s census will enumerate its population by “ethnicity” instead of “ancestry,” a term it used until 2021. This decision’s advocates ...

www.tandfonline.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

I wrote about how strange it is to suddenly be discovered as a member of the “Indian diaspora.” Much like Malaysia, Australia is now home to large Chinese and Indian minorities. As the state and political actors try to “engage” us, their attempts can fall flat
www.griffithreview.com/articles/245...

Intercultural futures

‘SO WHAT? THERE’S no story here,’ the marketing consultant snapped down the phone. ‘I mean, bloody hell, the premier’s forever banging on about Asia, and everybody’s heard it all before.’ Welcome to S...

www.griffithreview.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

4️⃣ I have some work out on minorities and diasporas, or more precisely, the politics and “statecraft” of managing diasporas – not only in Malaya/Malaysia but in Australia too, especially as it becomes more obviously shaped by currents in (especially Asian) #diaspora politics

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

He used an old theme – the “Chinese threat” – in his 2018 election campaign with Pakatan Harapan. He played up Najib Razak’s China and BRI connections to externalise voters’ concerns about local Chinese power (the DAP), displacing it onto mainland China instead www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Race, Debt and Sovereignty – The ‘China Factor’ in Malaysia’s GE14

Discussion about China, Chinese projects, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) featured prominently in Malaysia’s 2018 election campaign, prompting widespread international debate since May about...

www.tandfonline.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

I wrote on how Mahathir used the “jahiliah,” alongside comparisons with the Taliban, in his campaign to contain PAS’ influence and develop a “modern,” developmentalist Islam in the 1990s. Mahathir is very good at historical and civilisational rhetoric!
bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/publication/...

Malaysia: Islam, Society and Politics | ISEAS Publishing

This collection of essays has been prepared as a tribute to Clive S. Kessler, Professor of Sociology at the University of New South Wales for over twenty years and a member of staff of the London Scho...

bookshop.iseas.edu.sg

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

3️⃣ I have a series of publications on contemporary Malaysian politics and the way political actors deploy historical themes, including Islamic “civilisational” concepts, histories of colonisation and anti-colonial rebellions, decolonisation, the “Chinese threat,” and "modern" Muslim #developmentalism

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

Here's a review article on the literature on the Malayan #Emergency. I argue we are now better set up to understand how the Emergency forced the construction of Malaya/Malaysia’s “consociational” racial politics, enabling a specific, racialised process of #decolonisation
brill.com/view/journal...

brill.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

Josh Gedacht and I have engaged the “mobility,” “cosmopolitanism” and “inter-Asia” turns in Asian and colonial historiography. Much of that mobility was coerced by states, which actively displaced select groups of Southeast Asian Muslims to remove "problem" actors
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Coercing Mobility: Territory and Displacement in the Politics of Southeast Asian Muslim Movements | Itinerario | Cambridge Core

Coercing Mobility: Territory and Displacement in the Politics of Southeast Asian Muslim Movements - Volume 45 Issue 3

www.cambridge.org

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

Malay communists, then pushing for a multiracial concept of Malayan citizenship, were expelled from the arena of national politics by the Emergency and #ColdWar. Their "cosmopolitanism" became simply nostalgia, and communist politics became racialised as "Chinese"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Race, Space, and the Malayan Emergency: Expelling Malay Muslim Communism and Reconstituting Malaya's Racial State, 1945–1954 | Itinerario | Cambridge Core

Race, Space, and the Malayan Emergency: Expelling Malay Muslim Communism and Reconstituting Malaya's Racial State, 1945–1954 - Volume 45 Issue 3

www.cambridge.org

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

2️⃣ I have a stream of work on the Malayan Emergency – actually the First and Second Malayan Emergencies – and the “Malay Work” the Malayan Communist Party (later Communist Party of Malaya) performed as part of its united front approach, including via the Tenth Regiment of the Malayan People’s Army

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

Rebels fought these processes! In Terengganu, they used symbols and concepts they borrowed from the #Ottoman Empire to challenge their local enclosure and imperialist world and regional orders. They raised a red flag – the "bendera Stambul" – in Kuala Berang
academic.oup.com/british-acad...

‘We Hope to Raise the Bendera Stambul’: British Forward Movement and the Caliphate on the Malay Peninsula

Abstract. In the decades between the 1870s and the 1920s, groups of Malay Muslims circulated symbols of the Ottoman Caliphate in gestures of defiance again

academic.oup.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

At the time, several Siamese tributaries pleaded for inclusion in British Malaya, articulating British race theory back to Britain. This process reveals that the history of Malaysia's “3R,” or its “race, religion, royalty” idea, goes back way further than UMNO
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Like a Child with Two Parents: Race, Religion and Royalty on the Siam‐Malaya Frontier, 1895‐1902

Since 1957, Malaysian public life has been organized around a historic conflation of three important political themes: “race, religion and royalty”, or “3R”, all of which are purportedly championed a...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

And one on the first British-Siamese boundary (1902). For Britain, defining this boundary became urgent when the Pahang War broke out (1890-95), and rebels, e.g. Mat Kilau and Tok Gajah, fled to Terengganu to evade the British and picked up its perang sabil politics
www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

Bordering Malaya’s ‘Benighted Lands’: Frontiers of Race and Colonialism on the Malay Peninsula, 1887–1902 (Chapter 8) - Challenging Cosmopolitanism

Challenging Cosmopolitanism - September 2018

www.cambridge.org

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

So, here's one on enclosure and land control struggles in colonial Terengganu, which created a technocratic regime for managing land while bounding subjects within new state spaces. Terengganu cultivators responded with a Holy War, a perang sabil, in 1928
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Making spaces, making subjects: land, enclosure and Islam in colonial Malaya

Land control struggles were central to multiple projects of enclosure in colonial Malaya. Indeed, enclosures created Malaya, a discrete geo-body constructed by bounding the Malay polities of the M...

www.tandfonline.com

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

1️⃣ On anti-colonial uprisings in Malaya's Peninsular North – centred on #Terengganu – and the wider Anglo-Siamese-Malay-German elite competition that remade this region. I cover competition for land and resources, the regional geopolitical environment, and a world order shaped by colonial power

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 20

Hi, new Bluesky followers! 👋 Here’s an introductory thread about my research publications, grouped by theme #malaya #malaysia #SoutheastAsia #history #colonialhistory #diasporas #asianstudies #postcolonial #ColdWar

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Amrita Malhi @amritamalhi.bsky.social · Nov 17

Thanks! I'll look for them. Maybe we should see about creating a SEA History one

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