Social and religious interaction and integration of Chinese Muslim converts with Malays in Kuala Lumpur an empirical study

This research set outs to explore the exact levels of the social and religious aspects of interaction and integration between Chinese Muslim converts and their Malay counterparts in Kuala Lumpur. I was sure that interaction and integration in both social and religious aspects are dilemmas which Chinese Muslims face when they convert from their own religion to Islam. It suggests that when these converts begin to practise Islam, their behaviour changes in line with the identity of the Malays. This is because Islam equates to Malay in the Malaysian context. I believed this behaviour contributes to the disintegration of their ethnic structures, and to rejection by their original ethnic group because of the social differences that emerge post-conversion. Whilst they are welcomed by their Malay counterparts, it is nevertheless hypothesized that they may not interact and integrate fully into the Malay socio-religious community. Therefore, I conducted this empirical research directly looking for the precise degree of such interaction and integration, and indirectly exploring in what kinds of Malay practices the converts participate most fully. The research is guided by several theories, methodologies and six hypothesis statements designed to narrow the investigation. Specifically, the research will be divided into many discussions. The introduction will discover the multi-ethnic situation in Malaysia and the objectives, scope and hypothesis statements of the research. The next chapter will give some of the concepts used in this research as well as identifying the problems of the converts. The next chapter will describe the historical background to the ethnic situation in Malaysia, focusing on the situation in Kuala Lumpur, where the research will be conducted. The subsequent chapter will focus on the design of the questionnaire to be presented to 600 selected respondents who are Chinese Muslim converts in Kuala Lumpur. The 600 respondents will represent 10% of the whole convert population. Then, in the next chapter will take place the processing and analysis of the returned questionnaires. The next chapter gives an account of the research findings, considered the backbone of this research, while the last chapter concentrates on the analysis of the research findings and on some suggestions that arise from them