The Malaysian Islamic Party, 1951–2013: Islamism in a Mottled Nation

261 Pages·2014·1.855 MB·English

by  Farish A. Noor

RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN ASIA 1 RELIGION AND SOCIETY IN ASIA
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The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) happens to be one of the oldest and a
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biggest political parties in Malaysia today, though not as well-known as is
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the Jamaat-e Islami of Pakistan or the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. This A
is a work that recounts the constructed nature of PAS, as a party that has . N
o
undergone several transformations − from a left-leaning anti-colonial party o
r
in the 1950s and 1960s, to a right-leaning communitarian party in the 1970s,
to a party inspired by the Iranian revolution in the 1980s, to its present avatar
as a pro-democracy party. It shows how PAS has evolved along a non-linear
path, and was shaped by a host of internal and external variable factors that
impacted upon Malaysia and its complex society.

Farish A. Noor is Associate Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, and
the head of its Contemporary Religion in Southeast Asia Program.
T
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This masterful work on how ‘political Islam’ has transformed Malaysian
e
Farish A. Noor
politics is now one of the essential books about contemporary Islamist politics. M
— Clive Kessler, The University of New South Wales a
la The Malaysian Islam ic
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This book should top any required reading list on Islamist politics and social i
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activism among students, decision-makers, and the general public alike. n
Party PAS 1951-2013
— Joseph Chinyong Liow, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and Nanyang Is
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Technological University
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This is the best study of PAS that has appeared to date, and Farish’s richly P
a Islamism in a Mottled Nation
documented work relate the shifts in PAS’s counter-hegemonic discourse and r
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practice to the wider political context, both national and international. y
P
— Prof Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University A
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ISBN: 978-90-8964-576-0
AUP.nl
9 789089 645760
The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951-2013
Religion and Society in Asia
The ‘Religion and Society in Asia’ series presents state-of-the-art cross-
disciplinary academic research on colonial, postcolonial and contemporary
entanglements between the socio-political and the religious, including the
politics of religion, throughout Asian societies. It thus explores how tenets of faith,
ritual practices and religious authorities directly and indirectly impact on local
moral geographies, identity politics, political parties, civil society organizations,
economic interests, and the law.
It brings into view how tenets of faith, ritual practices and religious authorities
are in turn configured according to socio-political, economic as well as security
interests. The series provides brand new comparative material on how notions of
self and other as well as justice and the commonweal have been predicated upon
‘the religious’ in Asia since the colonial/imperialist period until today.
Series Editors
Martin Ramstedt, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
Adam Yuet Chau, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS
1951-2013
Islamism in a Mottled Nation
Farish A. Noor
Amsterdam University Press
Cover photo: PAS political rally, 2013. Photograph by Danny Lim.
Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden
Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout
Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by
the University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 978 90 8964 576 0
e-ISBN 978 90 4852 181 4 (pdf)
e-ISBN 978 90 4852 182 1 (ePub)
NUR 754
© Farish A. Noor / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2014
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of
this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owners and the authors of the book.
Dedicated to my mother,
Noraishah,
who taught me that to understand how a plant grows,
one must first understand the soil in which it is rooted.

Table of Contents
Introduction 9
Islamism in a Mottled Nation: The Story of PAS
Where and When We Are: Locating PAS in Today’s
Overdetermined and Highly Contested Malaysia 9
1 1951-1969: The Orphan of the Cold War 17
An Islamic Party Steps on the Stage of Malaysian Politics
Islamism Ascending: How and Why Political Islam Emerged in
the World of Malayan Politics 17
The Kaum Muda Challenge: Islamist Activism as the Precedent
to Islamist Politics 20
Competing Discourses during the Japanese Military
Occupation of Malaya 26
The First Expression of Malay-Muslim Nationalism: The Partai
Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya 30
Political Islam before PAS: The Short-lived Hizbul Muslimin
Party of Malaya 33
Born from the Womb of UMNO: The Early Years of PAS as
Persatuan Islam Se-Malaya 36
PAS under Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy: Islamism to the Left 47
2 From Internationalism to Communitarianism 67
PAS as the Defender of Malay Rights: 1970-1982
From Internationalism to Localism: PAS’s Inward Turn in the 1970s 67
The Fire of Youth: Student Activism and Islamism on the
Campuses of Malaysia in the 1970s 78
The Islamist Tide Grows Stronger: PAS in the Muslim World at
the Close of the 1970s 98
3 PAS in the Global Islamist Wave: 1982-1999 113
1982: The Ulama era begins 113
Ustaz Yusof bin Abdullah al-Rawa and PAS’s Renewed Jihad of
the 1980s 118
Against the Secular State: Violence and Confrontation in PAS’s
politics of the 1980s 128
The Islamists Falter: PAS’s Nadir in 1986 134
On to the 1990s: PAS redefines its Jihad 141
The Ground Shifts, Again: The Narrowing of the Muslim
Political Arena from the Mid-1990s to 1999 149
4 The Jihad of the Ballot Box 163
PAS’s Democratic Experiment: 2000-2013
2000-2004: The New Century Explodes 163
The 2004 Election Debacle and the Resurgence of the Reformist
‘Erdogan’ Faction in PAS 175
The 8 March 2008 Tsunami: The Eclipse of Islam Hadari and
the Return of PAS 188
PAS in the Era of 1Malaysia: The Internal Divisions Finally
Come to the Surface 195
The Return of the Repressed: The Sabah ‘Sulu Crisis’ and Its
Impact on Malaysia 210
Endnote, Though Not Endgame: PAS in the Future 217
5 Religion, Politics, Islam, Islamism 223
What PAS Is, and What It Is Not
PAS and the Lure of All-Devouring Politics 223
The Understanding-that-Kills: Knowing the Islamic State 227
Between Tidy Universes and Fuzzy Borders 233
The Unending Road: Islamism in a Loop 237
Bibliography 241
Index 255
Introduction
Islamism in a Mottled Nation: The Story of PAS
A story never dies, even when the breath is no longer ours. It stays trapped under
a century, or on the floor of a dark sea, waiting for a new teller.
Omar Musa, A Trance (Parang)
Without a convenient epiphany, historians are left forever chasing shadows,
painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its complete-
ness, however thorough or revealing their documentation. Of course, they make
do with other work: the business of formulating problems, of supplying explana-
tions about cause and effect. But the certainty of such answers always remains
contingent on their unavoidable remoteness from their subjects. We are doomed
forever, hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.1
Simon Schama, Dead Certainties
Where and When We Are: Locating PAS in Today’s
Overdetermined and Highly Contested Malaysia
In July 2013, barely two months after Malaysia’s thirteenth general elec-
tions, the country found itself at yet another one of the many crossroads
of its history. A cursory overview of the headlines in the mainstream press
would suggest that the Federation of Malaysia was being assailed by a host
of internal and external threats; ranging from the revival of Communism
(long since banned) to the scourge of Western-sponsored liberal advocacy
groups that were championing the cause of women’s rights, ethnic and
religious minorities as well as marginalised gender groupings; from foreign
insurgents to clandestine Shia Muslim cells operating on the campuses
of the country.2 The nation, it seemed, was more vulnerable than ever to
radical contingency and unpredictability.
Yet in the midst of this apparent chaos, analysts could discern hints of
normality and predictability in the nation’s discourse and political behav-
iour. Being one of the most ethnically and religiously complex nations in
1 Simon Schama, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations; Granta Books, London, 1991.
P. 320.
2 See PAS: We Have No Links to Syiah Teachings, www.malaysiakini.com, 28 July 2013; Jakim
Watching Growing Shia Movement-Bernama, TheMalaysianInsider.com, 28 July 2013.