ABSTRACT

Professional social work emerged on the basis of secular and Eurocentric worldview in the West in the late 19th century. As emerging nations in the 1940s, Asian Muslims were not spared being colonized in ways more than just physical presence by foreign powers. This article describes briefly how professional social work entered Malaysia and Bangladesh. The focus is to show how Western-based social work knowledge influenced the respective curriculums in the two mentioned countries. Muslims, in terms of knowledge and their religion of Islam have not made an imprint on the body of knowledge in social work. With the current ongoing discourses on the definition of social work, this article presents how Islam and local knowledge can play a mainstream role in questioning the colonial assumptions inherent in much accepted social work knowledge. While there are similarities between Western and Islamic values in reference to helping, there are also differences in which the latter is more suitable for the local population. Therefore, this article is also an initiative to start a dialog and a determined effort toward putting Islamic and local knowledge as a part of social work curricula and practice in Malaysia and Bangladesh.

摘要

专业社会工作是在 19 世纪后期西方世俗和以欧洲为中心的世界观的基础上出现的。作为 1940 年代的新兴国家，亚洲穆斯林并没有幸免于受到外国势力以外的其他方式的殖民。本文简要介绍专业社会工作如何进入马来西亚和孟加拉国。重点是展示西方社会工作知识如何影响上述两个国家各自的课程。穆斯林，在知识和他们的伊斯兰教宗教方面没有在社会工作的知识体系中留下印记。在当前关于社会工作定义的讨论中，本文展示了伊斯兰教和地方知识如何在质疑广泛接受的社会工作知识中固有的殖民假设方面发挥主流作用。虽然西方和伊斯兰价值观在帮助方面有相似之处，但也存在差异，后者更适合当地人口。因此，本文也是发起对话的倡议，并为将伊斯兰教和当地知识作为马来西亚和孟加拉国社会工作课程和实践的一部分而做出的坚定努力。