An Autobiography of a REBEL: KASSIM Ahmad

Autobiography of a Rebel is the final autobiography of Kassim Ahmad, completed shortly before his passing in Octobet 2017. Within he tells the story of his transition from a leader of the Malaysian Left to a scholar of the Quran and Hadith, and a member of UMNO. Brought up in rural Kedah, Kassim Ahmad became politically aware in the period of Malaya’s independence struggle and through his membership of the University Socialist Club, making his name with a radical analysis of the figures of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat in the Hikayat Hang Tuah. Yet by the 1980s he had become both a staunch critic of socialism and an Islamic thinker set out to challenge orthodoxy and reinterpret the dominant interpretation of Islam, most notabl in his Hadis- Satu Penilaian Semula.

Autobiography of a Rebel tells the story of a man whose intellectual journey from socialism to Islam was rooted in his continuous questioning about what it means to live in a just society, and his belief that philosophical inquiry was vital to the production of a better governed and more prosperous country. Autobiography of a Rebel tells therefore the story of Kassim Ahmad’s life, but is also his Mal inteilectual statement.