Keris Mas’s Critique of Islamic Rituals in Malay Life

Keris Mas’s final two novels present a severe critique of secular development strategies in Malaysia. He uses a multiple perspective ethnographic approach that is a metaphor for his rejection of colonial global economic development engineering that takes little account of moral consequences or the poverty of Malay villagers. In the first, he attacks amoral international capitalism by following a Malay entrepreneur and his entourage. The second novel shows how elite groups in the late colonial period approved Islamic practices that supported hegemonic colonial business ideologies. All Keris’s characters present distinctive ways of looking at events as they unfold.