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Book review -- "The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS, 1951–2013" by Farish Noor
(Amsterdam Uni Press, 2014).

Article  in  The Round Table · February 2015

DOI: 10.1080/00358533.2015.1004860

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The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS,

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Seng-Guan Yeoh
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Monash University Malaysia
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 The Round Table, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2015.1004860

Book Review
The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS, 1951–2013
Farish A. Noor
Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2014, pp. 260, ISBN 9789089645760
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 21:12 01 February 2015

(hardback)

In January, 2015 a pioneering Syariah Index Project headed by a professor from the
International Islamic University Malaysia will commence. Endorsed by the prime minis-
ter’s department, the project aims to construct a metric to calibrate the transformation of
the country’s administration based on Maqasid Al-Syariah (Islamic Law). If one follows
the long arc of Farish Noor’s argument in the book under review, this is not unex-
pected. Despite a secular federal constitution, this trend can be attributed to the vicari-
ous influence that the opposition party, Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) (formerly
Persatuan Islam Se-Malaysia)—the Islamic Party of Malaysia—has on the Malaysian
socio-political landscape.
Indeed, PAS has been a formidable ideological force ever since its creation in
November 1951. Carved out of the United Malay Nationalist Organisation (UMNO) by
mainly dissenting ulamas and imams during a milieu of political transition, PAS’s polit-
ical goal of state capture and remaking Malaysia into an Islamic state has been an
alarming spectre and bogeyman to its detractors. For PAS, by contrast, an Islamic polity
is the only way to redress an array of everyday socio-moral ills and structural economic
malaise perceived to beset the country.
This has not been merely an iconoclastic or a parochial project. From the beginning,
the leadership of PAS, as did a number of prominent Malay-Muslim intellectuals who
preceded them, partook of the cosmopolitanism of political Islam. But as only one of
many competing political alternatives on offer then, the pioneering PAS leadership was
not averse to forging tactical alliances with left-leaning secular political parties of the
time. Farish Noor observes:

Painfully aware of the fact that it was the only Islamist party on Malaya’s new political
landscape, PAS attempted to maintain its position as an opposition party by challenging the
nationalist credentials of the new UMNO–MCA [Malayan Chinese Association] Alliance
government instead, while also affirming its long-standing opposition to all forms of
colonial and neo-colonial politics (p. 55).

Contrary to the perception that the ‘Islamisation race’ between PAS and UMNO is a
recent phenomenon, Farish suggests a much earlier date. For instance, a Quran reading
contest was introduced in 1960 by UMNO leaders to ward off criticisms by PAS that
UMNO is essentially a secular, pro-western party with elite interests. By the late 1960s,
however, upheavals in the Middle East and a change of leadership in PAS ushered in a
 2 Book Review

more communitarian face and with it a distrust of left-leaning political parties (such as
the Socialist Front). In contrast to its internationalist phase, PAS began to champion
more singularly Malay rights and Islamic identity. As its ethno-nationalist rhetoric deep-
ened, so did efforts of the UMNO leadership escalate in laboring to woo the all-impor-
tant Malay-Muslim vote. An array of Islamic-based institutions and state policies in
buttressing Malay-Muslim economic and cultural hegemony were successively imple-
mented even as the UMNO leadership simultaneously assured their non-Malay-Muslim
political partners and wider populace that their constitutional rights would be
safeguarded. Concomitantly, a number of Islamic groups spawned by non-state actors
were either criminalised (such as Darul Arqam) or co-opted as they were evaluated as
undesirable competitors.
Downloaded by [Monash University Library] at 21:12 01 February 2015

Except for the state of Kelantan—the traditional stronghold of PAS— its political for-
tunes have waxed and waned, especially among urban constituencies, during the general
elections. This is due to the mix of local and supra-local issues that are brought to bear
in these campaigns. During the ‘global Islamic wave’ of the 1980s and 1990s, PAS’s
political appeal increasingly became more radicalised. It also attracted new kinds of
supporters beyond the rural Malay peasantry. Disillusioned with the perceived deca-
dence of global capitalism and UMNO’s complicity with the status quo, PAS’s member-
ship saw an influx of university-educated religious activists, technocrats and
professionally inclined Islamists.
By the early 1990s, the jihad of a revitalised PAS was helped by social dislocations
fuelled by a more open national economy and rapid developmental trajectory advocated
by the Mahathir Administration. Also fortuitous for PAS was the sudden formation of a
breakaway political party from UMNO, Semangat 46, which subsequently catalysed the
creation of an opposition coalition that presented a viable option for state capture before
it disintegrated several years later.
Since the late 1990s, this fractious political scenario has recurred once again but with
arguably more durable effects. The infamous sacking of the charismatic former deputy
prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, galvanised the creation of another broad opposition
coalition, Pakatan Rakyat (People’s Pact), which includes PAS as a key partner. The
results of the general elections of 2008 and 2013 have indexed an emergent ground
shift in how the electorate, especially young and urban voters, is envisioning the politi-
cal future of Malaysia. These democratic ideals do not sit well with communitarian
approaches on both sides of the political divide. As with other opposition political par-
ties PAS has been quick to take cognisance of these rising aspirations. Nevertheless,
while appropriating new communicative technologies and marketing strategies in order
to appear accessible and relevant, PAS’s core political vision has remained relatively
intact over the decades.
Farish Noor’s close reading of the key historical turning points of PAS as a singular
political entity is very welcome. As a ‘deconstructive history’, PAS is rightly not seen
as a homogenous and static entity unaffected by the opportunities and crises engendered
by changing socio-political realities in Malaysia and beyond. Notwithstanding these
mutations and despite claims to being reformist, PAS’s world view is nevertheless fun-
damentally totalising and hierarchical where the divide between Muslims and infidels is
currently non-negotiable. Consonant with the world view of the Islamists, its political
praxis is thus determined not by the needs of politics but by the dictates of religion
‘where whatever is right is forever right, and what is wrong will remain wrong’
 Book Review 3

(p. 236). In that vein, Farish Noor concludes that under present circumstances PAS will
not be able ‘to successfully mount a challenge to the status quo and capture the state,
despite the availability and intelligibility of Islam as the symbolic repertoire known by
most’ (p. 239). What is ironic is that while PAS has never been able to succeed in its
political ambitions except at state levels, the kinds of Islamisation and Islamism increas-
ingly evident in Malaysian society over the last few decades have been set in motion
by its arch nemesis of old, UMNO.

Seng-Guan Yeoh © 2015

Monash University Malaysia
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