A way of speaking up

FROM the late 1980s into the 1990s, social anthropologists were interested in studying the cultural-splitting which took place in rural Malaysia – the rise of Islamic revivalism or dakwa and the push of young rural Malay girls into factories in the urban Free Trade Zones.

There were families that welcomed the residential religious secondary schools where the syllabus was both secular and Islamic, combining the Lower Certificate of Education (Sijil Rendah Pelajaran) and the Sijil Rendah Ugama (SRU) or Lower Certificate of Religion (Islamic).