This article reinterprets Abdullah Hussain’s Imam (1995) through Najīb al-Kīlānī’s Islamic literary framework,

focusing on the triadic principle of life–human–cosmos. Rather than treating ethics as message, the study offers

a form-sensitive account of how setting, focalisation, rhythm, and recurring motifs translate Malay Muslim

recognition to communal responsibility. The contribution clarifies the mediating role of life–human– cosmos

within Kīlānī’s system and offers a portable, classroom-ready sequence aligning literary study with value-centred

The modern Malay novel Imam by Abdullah Hussain (1995) has long captivated critics and readers for its

compelling vision of faith, reform, and communal life, crossing generational and disciplinary boundaries in

Malay letters (Braginsky 2004). Beyond its overt moral horizon, Imam endures because it renders everyday

experience, human agency, and the natural–built environment as a single intelligible order—an aesthetic system

in which form does ethical work. Read through Najīb al-Kīlānī’s theorisation of Islamic literature, the novel does

(tarjamat al-ḥayāh wa-al-insān wa-al-kawn) remains comparatively under-examined as an independent analytic

in Malay criticism, despite its mediating role between creed (ʿaqīdah) and craft—where narrative voice,

focalisation, rhythm, and motif articulate ethical orientation (al-Kīlānī 1987). Clarifying this mediation is crucial

if we are to understand why Imam continues to function as both a literary achievement and a social-ethical

This article advances a twofold argument. First, we contend that the abiding appeal of Imam lies in its integrative

grammar: the novel binds communal routines (worship, counsel, labour) to spaces and symbols (mosque,

kampung; light, water, earth) so that aesthetics becomes ethical cartography, re-ordering social relations around

God-centred obligations (Abdullah Hussain 1995; Norhayati Ab Rahman 2011). Second, we propose

translational ecology to name the movement by which literary form channels aesthetic recognition into ethical

form-sensitive reading as a method equal to the novel’s ethical ambition (Braginsky 2004; Muhammad Haji

Finally, the article gestures to pedagogical significance. By articulating life–human–cosmos through

translational ecology, we offer a portable sequence—observe form → map symbol → infer ethic → design

action—that aligns literary study with value-centred humanities education in Southeast Asia (Osman 2006). In

this reframing, aesthetics is not ornament but a conduit of social ethics, explaining Imam’s continuing force as

Foundational accounts of Islamic literary theory insist that aesthetics and ethics are mutually constitutive

Within Malay letters, historical syntheses locate an enduring reformist poetics that weds narrative craft to

communal responsibility (Braginsky 2004; Muhammad Haji Salleh 2009; Zainal Abidin Borhan 2010). Against

this backdrop, Abdullah Hussain’s Imam (1995) is frequently treated as a landmark of modern Malay-Islamic

fiction: it stages collective deliberation, spiritual discipline, and social repair in a recognisably contemporary

milieu (Engku Maimunah 1994; Norhayati Ab Rahman 2011; Siti Zainon Ismail 2006). Beyond theme, work on

plot and dramaturgy shows how pacing, focalisation, and dialogic scenes organize ethical uptake (Genette 1980;

Zakaria Ariffin 2022). Recent discussions of reception and adaptation underscore the novel’s cultural afterlife

centripetal public space, kampung as matrix of mutuality—through which narrative worlds become ethical

cartography (Tuan 1974; Casey 1997; Norhayati Ab Rahman 2011). Within Imam, sequences organised around

ablution zones, courtyards, and communal thresholds exemplify how spatial form carries normative force (Engku

Ecocriticism supplies a vocabulary for linking symbolic nature to moral imagination (Buell 1995; Garrard 2012;

Heise 2008). Islamic eco-ethics complements this by grounding environmental care in worship and stewardship

rather than secular utility (Nasr 1996; Foltz 2006; Saniotis 2012). When read through this combined lens,

recurrent motifs of light, water, and earth in Malay-Islamic narratives do more than decorate scenes; they map

rituals (purification), epistemic orientation (guidance), and creaturely limits (earth) onto concrete social

call for analyses that demonstrate mechanism rather than merely inventory values (Braginsky 2004; Muhammad

Haji Salleh 2009; Rahmah Osman 2006). Our article contributes to this shift by theorising translational

ecology—the relay form → symbol → ethic → action—as a processual specification of al-Kīlānī’s triad (alKīlānī

Studies of Imam frequently note that character arcs align inner rectification with institutional repair: reform

proceeds through counsel, exemplarity, and the ethics of procedure rather than coercion (Engku Maimunah 1994;

Norhayati Ab Rahman 2011). Comparative narratology strengthens this view: dialogic scenes instantiate public

reasoning (Bakhtin 1981); free indirect discourse sustains moral ambiguity while guiding interpretation (Cohn

1978; Genette 1980). This aligns with Malay-Islamic notions of adab as habituated right-measure in relation to

Collectively, these strands establish Imam’s canonical status, the Islamic reformist poetics of Malay literature,

and the importance of space, symbol, and character for ethical imagination (Braginsky 2004; Muhammad Haji

Salleh 2009; Engku Maimunah 1994; Norhayati Ab Rahman 2011). What remains under-developed is a

systematic account of the life–human–cosmos triad as a formal-ethical mechanism. By proposing translational

ecology and applying a form-sensitive reading to key scenes, the present study addresses this gap and clarifies

how spatial design and symbolic ecology in Imam re-order social relations within a God-centred cosmos

mediating grammar of Najīb al-Kīlānī’s Islamic literary theory: a triadic constraint that links creed (ʿaqīdah) to

functions as a semiotic hinge that translates doctrine into perceptible order: the world is rendered as a legible

Competing explanations (e.g., “message-driven didacticism”) predict explicit authorial assertion; our framework

Interpretive payoff. Reading space as ethical cartography clarifies the novel’s critique of modern fragmentation:

sacred architectures and communal geographies are not nostalgic décor but instruments for re-ordering social

Character arcs exhibit reform through counsel, exemplarity, and due process—not coercion. Dialogues about

waqf allowances, fairness in institutional pay, and the responsibilities of leadership demonstrate how inner

rectification scales to structural change (Abdullah Hussain 1995). Technically, free indirect discourse and

measured dialogic pacing sustain moral ambiguity while staging public reasoning, aligning with narratological

Interpretive payoff. Kīlānī’s “human” (insān) is not an abstract bearer of virtue but an agent apprenticed by

(seeing rightly), water couples ritual to environment (ablution, rain, rivers), and earth grounds finitude and

accountability (Abdullah Hussain 1995). Within Islamic eco-ethics these motifs articulate a cosmology where

Interpretive payoff. The motif-system acts as ethical mnemonics: readers learn to associate affective recognition

(beauty, awe, relief) with obligations (purification, repair, restraint). This is translational ecology in operation—

Testimonial fragments—e.g., recollections of wartime arrest and loss—thicken the novel’s moral texture by

embedding ethical choice within historical wound. The compression of testimony (few lines, high intensity)

functions as narrative conscience, reminding readers that reformist action is not abstract idealism but response