Non-Muslim Religious Practice and Muslim Response in Malaysian Inter-Religious Discourse (original) (raw)

Malaysia is a multi-religious country. Apart from Islam as the religion of the Federation, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and other religions are freely practised by their believers. However, in some circumstances, a small number of religious practices created misunderstandings among the believers which became inter-religious issues at the national level. This paper discusses non-Muslim religious practices which are unaccepted by Muslims in the Malaysian inter-religious discourse, with the objectives of (1) analysing Muslim linguistic disagreement over non-Muslim religious practice, and (2) explaining the reasons behind the disagreement. The discussion is based on the pragmatic approach proposed by Crystal (1999): the language from its users’ point of view, especially the choices they make, the constraints they face when using the language in social interaction, and the effect of the use of the language on other users. The data in the discussion are four religious issues from 2006...

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