ARI Working Paper Series

Abdoumaliq Simone characterizes a central feature of “city-ness” as marked by “crossroads”, viz., where people “take the opportunity to change each other around by virtue of being in that space, getting rid of the familiar ways of and plans for doing things and finding new possibilities by virtue of whatever is gathered there”. This paper discusses some of the “crossroads” that have been historically traversed and how they have impacted on inter-ethnic and inter-faith relations in the socio-spatial context of the capital city of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. These include the trajectories of colonialist knowledge, the New Economic Policy (1971-90), the Islamization of Malaysian society, and, most significantly, the Vision 2020 programmatic push initiated by Mahathir Mohamad during his long reign as prime minister. I argue that these material, demographic, and affective changes have given rise to unfamiliar cultural and religious complexities in Kuala Lumpur, and in ways which both deepen and dilute religious conviviality.