Muslim Understanding of Pragmatism and Its Application in Malaysia: A Critical Study

Abstract

This concept paper discusses the ideology of pragmatism. Globalization has exceptionally played an important role in every area of human life, especially in the cultural and religious dimensions. Apart from that, globalization is increasingly affecting Muslims’ life. Along with this, pragmatism, one of the modern ideologies, is also affecting Muslims’ life. Pragmatism has become one of the important issues nowadays. Some people practice it in their daily life without knowing the suitability of this ideology from an Islamic perspective. The rapid progress of media and technology has changed the lifestyle of people to become more modern across the world, including Malaysia. The changing of the lifestyle has led Muslim people to be influenced by the pragmatism ideology. Therefore, we need to analyze what kind of pragmatism that is suitable for Muslim from Islamic Perspective and Muslim scholar’s point of view. A set of in-depth interview questions was instrumented for collecting data from the respondents on their thought and application of pragmatism in Malaysia. The result of this study revealed most of respondents claim there are some aspects of pragmatism that can be applied by Muslim because for them Islam stands for pragmatic decisions. It is suggested that there is a need to understand better the actual practice of pragmatism before get influenced.