Leadership Quote by Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

A politician’s sentence that reads like a diplomatic memo is rarely “just” about theology. Badawi’s “we have been given a role to play” frames Malaysia (and by extension his government) as an appointed steward of Islamic modernity, not a contestant in a messy ideological marketplace. The passive voice matters: “given” and “asked” imply external validation, as if the mandate arrives from the international community, other Muslim societies, or history itself. That move converts policy into destiny.

The phrase “Islamic development” is the real payload. It treats Islam not only as belief but as a program - something that can be modeled, exported, and taught through “lectures.” That technocratic language is doing political work: it recasts religious authority as expertise, aligning Islam with administration, growth, and governance rather than agitation or sectarian struggle. “The way we do it here” quietly advertises a national brand of Islam - moderated, state-managed, compatible with economic ambition - while implying other contexts are missing that balance.

There’s also a defensive subtext aimed at the post-9/11 gaze: Malaysia as proof-of-concept that a Muslim-majority country can be stable, modern, and internationally legible. The line “so the people who are Muslims there would understand” positions an audience abroad that is either confused, misled, or vulnerable to harder-line interpretations. Badawi isn’t only describing outreach; he’s claiming soft power, and drawing a boundary around who gets to define “the role of Islam” in public life: not clerics alone, not activists, but the state speaking in Islam’s name.