This chapter focuses on the rise and fall of a Malaysian Islamic movement, Arqam, and in doing so, contributes three unusual perspectives: Islamic movements in Asia, (in this case, one of revitalization of a traditional religion), a global religious movement originating from a developing economy, Malaysia, and finally a case of failure.

A cursory browsing of digital and paper-based material on Asian globalized religious movements reveals the fact that the successful examples, especially new religious movements (NRMs), are overwhelmingly from Japan. Their success is often explained with reference to their style of organization which is highly corporate in nature and is measured, along with membership size, by their global reach made possible by good management, leadership, and a compact internal bureaucracy. Some well-known Japan specialists – local and foreign – have noted the parallels between Japanese multinational corporations (MNCs) and the Japanese NRMs (Matsunaga 2000; Nakamaki 1991, 2003; Smith 2008), which began to expand their international push around the same time, in the 1970s. Hence an epistemological focus on organization theory is now emerging more strongly in studies of NRMs to explain their success, as indeed was revealed in the case of Japanese NRMs. However, the task of accumulating sufficient and relevant ethnographic detail on organizational structures of each of the NRMs is not an easy one, especially if questions are asked about accounting and finance systems.