The closer the Malaysian Islamic party PAS is to the central seat of national power, the closer it gets to the fundamental basis for its politics. The 55th party muktamar has only one issue and which, all said and done, reaffirms unanimously this: what is the reason for the existence of PAS?
Quick observations, and the tentative answer has two inter-connected parts as follows:
(a) Malay political supremacy laced with Islam (The dilemma: Umno for Malay, PAS for Malay, or both?)
Nasharuddin Isa, Number Two in PAS, is for talking to Umno; Husam Musa is not, but note his reason for refusal – it’s only because PAS is likely to end up as second fiddle. Conversely to say, Husam would be willing if PAS came on top (which is improbable to him) or, at the minimum, equal to Umno.
Q. But nobody is laundering the question why Umno and PAS talking should ever be thought of? Ans: a possible Umno-PAS alliance.
Q. Why is an Umno-PAS alliance even necessary? Ans: If not to uphold Malay political supremacy – and in the corollary, Malay-Muslim dominance – then what else?
Q. Why is Malay political supremacy thought necessary? Ans: “Awang Selamat” from Utusan has supplied it; see, it’s the Chinese. Utusan, representative of thinking by street thugs, has merely phrased supremacy in terms of raw power; PAS however puts it in more religious terms and so is sacrosanct and therefore un-seditious. Here’s the evidence:
“It (missionary work) must not just be to get non-Muslim [Malaysian] support for PAS but to save them from hell,” Yusof (Embong, Pahang delegate) said to shouts of “Allahuakhbar” from the delegates. (Nga Kor Ming, are you listening?)
Those answers are consistent with the founding of PAS. It is that the way to Malay political dominance has to be through the religious route on the extreme left as opposed to the pure ethnic route taken by Umno coming from the extreme right. After 30, 40 years both are now meeting in the centre, so the logical outcome is necessarily an alliance because both were intended to serve the same purpose.
That conclusion, which is historical and self-evident, leads necessarily to the post-March 2008 question …
(b) Leadership in Pakatan Rakyat.
To say (Nasharuddin) that PAS and other Pakatan members, DAP and PKR, should establish once and for all time over which party should lead the coalition is the same as saying (Husam) PAS should replace Umno.
Q. Why, fundamentally, is PAS likened to Umno? Ans: That depends on the answer to the question, what is Umno today?
Q. What is Umno today? Ans: It is all things parochial and national – Malay culture, politics, Islam, Constitution, monarchy, NEP, language. It is all except this: it is not for Chinese or Indians or Iban or Kadazans or Christians or Buddhists, their culture, and so on. How is PAS different from Umno rests squarely on this: Islam is first on the former’s check list. But collapse religion into Malay constitutional identity, Umno and PAS become fundamentally the same.
Evidence again:
According to Kedah PAS representative Ahmad Yahya, the current strength of the PAS Supporters Club (KPP) was a sign of growing support by non-Muslims for the Islamic party.
However, PAS Youth deputy chief Azman Shapawi Rani cautioned care in deciding on the KPP’s place within the party.
“We have to refine our plan, and study it in greater detail. We cannot hurry,” Azman said.
PAS doesn’t want dilution (if not, it is no different from PKR), just as Umno has to be exclusively Malay.
Q. If PAS is Umno, what does that make of DAP and PKR? Ans: DAP is Gerakan; PKR is MCA, MIC, and all miscellaneous thrown together.
Q. Why is Umno relevant to Pakatan leadership? (This question came, surreptitiously, from Nasharuddin because he has simultaneously posed two things alongside each other: Umno-PAS alliance and Pakatan leadership.) Ans: Both Husam and Nasharuddin want the same thing. That is, Umno is to Barisan as PAS is to Pakatan. But here is the implied threat from Nasharuddin: if PAS isn’t going to be chief, then we are going to Umno. And, Husam reinforces it: if we go to Umno, then expect us to be the big chief.
The raison d’etre reaffirmed in the PAS muktamar exposes the fiction in several pieces of assertions cultivated so far by the DAP (Nga Kor Ming, Jeff Ooi, Ronnie Liu) and PKR (Anwar Ibrahim, Elizabeth Wong, but not Zulkifli Noordin) and their footloose sympathesizers (Raja Petra, Haris Ibrahim). The assertions:
1. The days of race politics are over.
2. A new dawn of equality awaits all who vote Pakatan.
3. PAS for all, the corollary of which is Bangsa Malaysia.
4. It is impossible for PAS to rule alone, so vote for it.
5. Pakatan is New Politics (and this has to be the biggest prize in fiction).
POSTSCRIPT: The Pakistani path that PAS may seek.
Lessons from Pakistan, the Islamic State. From Ali Eteraz in Dissent magazine:
Most people in the world, including some Pakistanis, live under the illusion that the country is secular and just happens to have been overrun by extremists. This is false. Pakistan became an Islamic state in 1973 when the new constitution made Islam the state religion. Under the earlier 1956 constitution Islam had been merely the “official” religion. Nineteen-seventy-three, in other words, represents Pakistan’s “Iran moment“—when the government made itself beholden to religious law.
Later,
Until Pakistan is recognized not as a secular state with an extremist problem but as an Islamic state overburdened with political ambitions couched in religious terms, change is not going to come. Pakistan’s 1973 constitution has to be criticized. It is not unreasonable for Islam to be the country’s official religion, but making it the state religion in a truly heterogeneous and heterodox religious milieu was a mistake.
The decision was made under duress by a Machiavellian politician who did not care very much for religion, which was why he was so happy to exploit it—not to mention that in the guise of Islam he smuggled in anti-democratic institutions from the dictatorship that preceded him. The subsequent empowerment of Islamist groups; the religious tyranny of Zia ul Haq; and the rise of Talibanization, legal balkanization, and militancy calling itself Islamic are all clear proof that 1973 led Pakistan down a dark and dangerous path. …
Pakistanis cannot simply ignore the ‘73 constitution and go to an earlier document, largely because one such instrument does not exist and also because, for all its flaws, that constitution has become central to the modern Pakistani state. For example, both dictators that followed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto—Zia and Musharraf—felt they had to manipulate the ‘73 constitution rather than step outside of it. It is also not possible to delete the nearly four decades of Islamization.
For a long time I believed that rather than deletion the better option was that of dilution. Under this approach, one would add more liberal interpretations of Islamic law into the mix to soften the hard-line wahhabi version that has dominated since Zia ul Haq’s time. Such an approach would use “good” or humane Islam to defeat “bad” or inhumane Islam. The hope would be that over time these moderate views would become mainstream.
The dilution strategy was on display in 2006 when reformers from the CII successfully argued that various elements of Pakistan’s Islamic criminal law were simply “un-Islamic.” At the time I thought this was a great move. By purportedly using Islam to thwart the hard-liners, the reformers were able to pass legislation that undermined the Hudood Ordinances and benefited many women.
I no longer ascribe to the dilution strategy. Not because it does not sometimes work but because it does nothing to challenge the essential flaw in Pakistani society: the state currently empowers citizens on the basis of their relationship to Islam rather than upon their status as “people” of Pakistan—an entity that is national and political and should not be defined by religion. The paramount purpose of a state is to guarantee political equality between its citizens, whether they are devout Muslims, non-practicing Muslims, heretical Muslims, or non-Muslims. The dilution strategy is a pragmatic approach that is unfair to those who are non-believers; not to mention unjust to those conservatives who do not wish to practice Islam progressively. Pakistan needs a document that extends itself to all Pakistanis.
