Exploring the Common Grounds of Islam and Atlas Shrugged

One of the events organized by the Malaysian Think Tank through the  2008 Atlas Shrugged Grant program was an academic symposium. The main goal of the symposium was to investigate the common grounds of ideas between Atlas Shrugged and Islam with 7 academics and officials from various institutions.Freedom Academy

Here are some of the results:

  • There is a hadith (saying of the Prophet Muhammad) which can be related to the strike in Atlas Shrugged. The hadith says that when the world is being ‘destroyed’ by political leaders, the best course of action is, and this is a quote of the last part of the hadith, to: “Distance yourself even if it means eating the bark of a tree until death overtakes you.”
  • Islam also supports rational thinking, despite attempts by some religious ‘scholars’ to make Muslims blindly follow what they say
  • Capitalism has too long been described as something ‘un-Islamic’ and it may be counterproductive at this stage to use the word ‘capitalism’ when engaging with Muslims. It would be better to use just ‘free market’

You can read about the other programs Malaysia Think Tank carried out as a part of the Atlas Shrugged project after the jump:

Freedom Academy

  • The weekend-conference took place with 33 participants on “The Virtues of Entrepreneurship and The Morality of Capitalism: Lessons from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged“in Penang, Malaysia. The main goal was to attract political officials from different parties to discuss the topic as well as get students and young professionals involved who might be future politicians.
  • With Malaysia, being a country who since independence in 1957, has almost always been under a big state, the concern was that if any political party would propagate a small state solution, they would not win votes. This is one area to work on in the future.

Atlas Shrugged Seminar in Singapore
The Seminar was held at National University of Singapore with 48 people, mainly academics and some students in an open dialogue discussion reviewing the book.

  • A debate (at times quite heated) soon ensued between those who agree and disagree with Ayn Rand – the discussion was free flowing and touched on many issues
  • The challenging thing about Singapore is the fact that it is an economically prosperous country despite political suppression. Many see the state as being very successful in creating a prosperous economy

General Outcomes

  • MTT was unsuccessful in attracting significant media interest. The newspaper editors we contacted were not convinced of the benefits of spreading Ayn Rand’s ideas
  • The Atlas Shrugged grant has been instrumental in enabling us to promote better understanding of entrepreneurship and free market ideas. Unlike a straightforward talk, having a book that the audience can discuss is a good guideline for the discussion
  • The grant has allowed MTT to form a working relationship with the Ayn Rand Institute and there are plans for an “Ayn Rand Tour” in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia in 2010


This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 10:31 AM. It is filed under Asia/Pacific, Atlas Shrugged Grants and tagged with , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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