My Malaysia ordeal shows how religion can fuse with populist nationalism to silence dissent

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Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University

(THE CONVERSATION) I hadn’t expected my book tour in Malaysia to end with a confrontation with men who identified themselves as police in a Kuala Lumpur airport.

I arrived in the Muslim-majority country in early January 2024 to promote the Malay translation of my book “Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment,” an academic analysis of the political and socioeconomic crises facing many Muslim societies today.

But my visit attracted unwarranted attention. Some conservatives and Islamists labeled me in social media a “liberal” – a term used by Malaysia’s federal agency administering Islamic affairs to denote those against the official religion, Sunni Islam. This was followed by...