During the 1960s, the Malaysian prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, struggled to establish the ‘Muslim Commonwealth’, an organization of Muslim-dominated sovereign states. This international programme for Muslim unity was particularly significant because it offered an opportunity for an unexpected player from outside the Islamic heartlands of the Middle East and South Asia to seize the leadership of the global religious community. This article recovers the project’s genealogy, objectives, and reception. In the global context of decolonization and the Cold War, the Tunku looked to the British-led Commonwealth of Nations to model this pan-Islamic institution in an attempt to promote cooperation, development, and peace among Muslims. He deployed a range of idioms to broaden the appeal of the Muslim Commonwealth, drawing from different intellectual genealogies and from an international circuit of ideas prevalent during decolonization. The eventual failure of the Tunku’s project exposes the hierarchies and rivalries in South–South relations during the decade and reveals how Malaysian-led pan-Islamism remained bound to the post-colonial condition of the nation-state.

This article investigates Berita Filem, one of the key Malay film magazines published in the 1960s, through the lens of minor fame: a form of temporary, localized celebrity status granted to aspiring actors, beauty pageant contestants, and other participants in the magazine’s interactive features. It charts some of the ways in which Berita Filem constructed fandom as a participatory endeavour, and how that participation was tied to ideas of modernity and Muslim belonging. Fan magazines were instructive in circulating images of stars, as well as forging a sense of collective culture for moviegoers before the advent of social media. While the last decade has witnessed a proliferation of historiographies centred on fan magazines and their content, both visual and textual, such studies remain largely limited to the Global North. In aiming to close this gap, this article examines three of Berita Filem’s regular columns, which took distinctive formats. ‘Our autograph column’ (Ruangan autograph kita) modelled itself after school yearbook pages, ‘Queen of Berita Filem’ (Ratu Berita Filem) was a beauty pageant, and ‘From heart to heart with Latifah Omar’ (Dari hati ke hati oleh Latifah Omar) was an advice column written by a movie star. At the core of this investigation is the question of historical readership at a time when Malaysia was a newly independent and rapidly changing nation.

This article discusses how the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shaped notions of rural life, rural community, and social reform in the context of South and Southeast Asian decolonisation. Building on scholarship analysing rural development either in term of continuities from the colonial era or as the result of specific circumstances after the Second World War, the argument here is that we can understand approaches to rural welfare after 1945 as the historical intersection of three factors: the rural specificities of decolonisation related to violence and mass displacement; FAO seeking relevance and legitimacy in the post-war order; and urban and rural elites objectifying rural life as a cornerstone of post-imperial nation-building. Empirically, the article analyses two (former) British colonies that experienced two different forms of decolonisation: territorial partition and imperial warfare. It relates these modes of decolonisation to the early formations of FAO’s rural expertise and argues that decolonisation was a structuring event for both local rural policy-making and the evolving international (rural) development agenda.

This study marks the first update on Malaysia’s marine tardigrades after more than 50 years, presenting both the discovery of a new species, Batillipes malaysianus sp. nov., and a new record, Batillipes rotundiculus. The specimens were collected from the intertidal zone at Pantai Pancur Hitam, Labuan, Malaysia, during two separate sampling efforts. Despite extensive sampling, the density of marine tardigrades in the area was found to be exceptionally low, with only a single specimen of B. malaysianus sp. nov. and a limited number of other Batillipes individuals collected. The new species, B. malaysianus sp. nov., is distinguished by unique morphological features, including setae scattered across the ventral cuticle – a trait not observed in any other species of the genus – and constricted primary clavae, a characteristic absent in other species of the B1 toe arrangement group. Additionally, B. rotundiculus represents the first confirmed record of this species in Malaysia, expanding its known distribution. This study also updates the global species count of Batillipes to 42, incorporating recent taxonomic changes and this new addition. An updated dichotomous key for the genus is provided, incorporating all species described to date. These findings underscore the importance of exploring understudied marine habitats and highlight the potential for discovering more tardigrade species in Malaysia.

Panulirus stimpsoni is restricted to southern China, Vietnam, and Japan but has been rarely reported in tropical Gulf of Thailand. In Malaysia, only six species were previously reported. This study (1) reports the seventh Malaysian species – a new record of P. stimpsoni with morphological and genetic data; (2) establishes a checklist of Malaysian Panulirus species. Surveys from 2021 to 2022 sampled lobsters across Malaysia by SCUBA or from fishermen. Seven species were identified and a modified key of Malaysian species was constructed. The COI gene was used for genetic identification and phylogenetic tree reconstruction with maximum likelihood (ML). The best model was GTR + I + G. The ML tree comprised Clades I and II with sequences clustering by species and strong support. Most Peninsular Malaysian lobsters were P. polyphagus while P. versicolor dominated Sabah. Information on P. stimpsoni's full fishery potential, distribution, ecology, and biology is limited. Further research is needed to ensure conservation and management as data are only available for six previously reported species. Further studies are required to discover sustainable use approaches for all Panulirus species, particularly P. stimpsoni, given limited ecological understanding.

Despite significant advancements in the development of psychotropic medications, increasing adherence rates remain a challenge in the treatment and management of psychiatric disorders. The purpose of this study is to qualitatively explore the challenges underlying medication adherence and strategies to improve it among adolescents with psychiatric disorders in Malaysia. This qualitative research design presents results from 17 semi-structured interviews with adolescent psychiatric patients, aged 11 to 19 years old, from public hospitals across Peninsular Malaysia. The data collected from interviews were transcribed and processed through thematic analysis using the NVivo 11 software. A total of three main themes concerning medication adherence were identified: (1) challenges; (2) coping strategies and (3) protective factors. In this study, thirteen subthemes emerge as challenges underlying medication adherence experienced by adolescent psychiatric patients. The coping strategies identified in this study fall under three broad subthemes which are problem-focused strategies, emotion-focused strategies and maladaptive strategies. This study also highlights social support and positive medicinal effects as protective factors for non-adherence issues in adolescent psychiatric patients. In conclusion, this study supports the notion that adherence is a multi-factorial phenomenon. This study can inform future development of interventions and targeted health promotion programmes in enhancing adherence.

This article investigates the developments of hawker discourse and movements across the Malay(si)an peninsula in the first decade of independence. Looking at news coverage and municipal records, it examines the contingent, gendered, and egalitarian qualities of hawking as labour which led to its adoption by people experiencing hardship, and influenced the ways in which municipal authorities and the public discussed hawkers. In effect, hawkers, long significant to the historical and cultural systems of Malayan trade, were recharacterized as vulnerable subjects at the urban margins. The article then explores how local administrations understood and regulated hawkers through categories of location, race, and food, shaping the politics and governance of hawkers in public spaces. To engage with such governance, hawkers formed associations that protested against injustice and established dialogue with municipal and town councils, impelling authorities to consider a more significant inclusion of hawking in street planning. Throughout the period, the potential and limits of hawker inclusion in post-colonial public spaces became subject to significant debate between municipal authorities, political representatives, and hawkers. As local administrations eventually deepened their commitment to support hawkers, they also expanded their regulation, signifying a cautious imperative to legitimate hawkers and influencing the logic of post-independence planned spaces.