The first woman to ever serve as Ambassador for Malaysia to the United States spoke to students yesterday.

Her Excellency Dr. Rajmah Hussain, spoke on the topic "Malaysia and Islam Hadhari" in the Kennedy Center.

The main objective of the lecture was to demonstrate how people of different religious faith and culture, who live in Malaysia, can work together for the common good of the country.

"In these troubled times . . . where there is much inter-religious strife, it is indeed very important to build bridges in order to create harmony between people and between religion," Hussain said.

The ambassador said the religion of Islam has been much maligned in recent times and wrongly associated with terrorism.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," she said. "Islam is a religion of peace. I am a Muslim and I'm proud of it."

The ambassador said that when extremism and radicalism manifest themselves in the form of terrorism, it must be condemned.

It is not justifiable to associate terrorism with any particular race or religion," she said. "Islam abhors terrorism."

The main topic of her lecture was to discuss Islam Hadhari. Translated into English, Islam Hadhari means civilizational Islam.

"Islam Hadari is not a new religion, it is not a new teaching; neither is it a new denomination of the Islam faith," Hussain said. "It is an effort to bring the [Muslims] back to basics, back to the fundamentals of Islamic civilization."

She described the goals of Islam Hadhari and said it is meant to put Muslims on the path to learning, peace, harmony, co-existence and progress.

Andrew Smith, a senior from Provo, explained Hadhari as a more civilized, modernized application of Islam as opposed to a traditionalist, more ancient view.

Smith also added his opinion on the topic.

"It is a laudable application of Islam, but at the same time it doesn't address totally the aspects on the ground," Smith said. "It is working towards that but there are facts that need to be addressed."

Jefferson Snow, a pre-communications major from Provo, enjoyed the new point of view the ambassador brought to the stereotypical opinions of Islam that exist among Americans.

"I liked how she tried to make us think about Islamic countries outside of the stereotype that maybe many Americans have, where we think they are backwards third world countries with despites and tyrannical leaders and tyrants," Snow said. "She helped us realize that there can be progressive, modern democratic countries where Islam is a predominant faith."

Malaysia is a parliamentary democracy. It has a multi-racial and multi-religious population of over 27 million people. The primary nationalities represented in Malaysia are the Malaysians, Chinese and Indians. Fifty years ago Malaysia broke away from British rule and since then has become the 10th leading trade partner to the U.S.

Copyright Brigham Young University 2 Nov 2007