Rural Muslim Guru's Appeal Worries Kuala Lumpur
International Herald Tribune
August 19, 1998
Thomas Fuller

A small, frail man emerges from the back seat of a metallic gray Mercedes Benz and walks slowly past supporters who jostle to shake his hand. Men sit on blocked-off roads around the building where the old man, an Islamic preacher, will deliver his weekly sermon. Women are clustered on the fringes of the crowd.

Here in the northeastern Malaysian state of Kelantan, he is known respectfully as Tuan Guru, the learned one. But to Malaysia's governing coalition he is Nik Aziz, a serious threat, a man whose pious Muslim views could prove attractive to voters as the country grapples with deepening economic turmoil — and whose party could whittle down the coalition's overwhelming majority.

National elections must be called before April 2000, but many analysts say polls could come soon, before Malaysia's recession deepens.

No one expects Mr. Aziz, 67, a Muslim scholar who is the chief minister of Kelantan, to become prime minister after the next general election. But Mr. Aziz's popularity may force the governing party to shift a few notches toward Mr. Aziz's view of the world and embrace some of the Islamic rituals that have been made into law in the state over the last few years.

While the rest of Malaysia uses the Western workweek, Kelantanese work Sundays and have Fridays off, according to Islamic tradition.

Since coming to power in 1990, the state government has required Muslim female employees to wear head scarves in shops and mandated separate supermarket checkout lines for women and men. Students in the state study Arabic as much as they do English, and although rock music is popular, concerts are banned.

Kelantan passed a law in 1994 requiring amputation of limbs for certain offenses — but the law was suspended by the federal government as unconstitutional.

All of this clashes with the modern face of Islam that Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad has espoused during his 17 years in power — and that leaders before him have considered necessary in a multiracial country where 40 percent of the population of 21 million is not Muslim. (By contrast, just 5 percent of Kelantan's population of 1.3 million is not Muslim.)

The appeal of Mr. Aziz's party, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, is clear, and not only in Kelantan — the only state among the 13 that is not controlled by the governing coalition. The party recently set off alarm bells by winning a by-election in nearby Perlis state.

Voters appear to be attracted by Mr. Aziz himself and his simple lifestyle. With loose fitting robes and a stooped profile, Mr. Aziz looks like a Gandhi with a wispy white beard. He lives in a small, modest green house in a rural suburb of the city. He is a Muslim scholar who speaks Arabic and Urdu, and he preaches tolerance for all races.

"I don't want people to ask, 'What will we get if we vote for PAS,"' Mr. Aziz said, referring to his party. "We are not based on material things."

His aides emphasize his simple lifestyle and say Kelantan has fared better than the rest of Malaysia during the economic crisis because of the government's effort to endorse a more simple lifestyle as well as steady-as-she-goes development strategy.

"Most of the basic needs for Kelantan people are taken care of already," said Wan Ismail Wan Jusoh, a close aide. "We have good roads, 97 percent of our people have electricity and we have a steady supply of water.

"The kind of people who have been affected by the crisis were involved in the stock market, they've been victimized by speculation, and maybe they took loans out from the bank that they can't repay," Mr. Wan Ismail said.

By contrast, he says, most Kelantan residents have not borrowed heavily. He is proud to point out that it often takes three to five years for Kelantanese to build a house. They continue building only when they have the money, rather than take a loan out from the bank.

While Kelantan has missed the acute effects of the regional economic crisis, by the same token, the state, one of poorest in the country, missed out on the boom.

When Mr. Aziz's party came to power — just as the rest of Malaysia was diversifying into high-end manufacturing and, more recently, information technology — the party declared Kelantan a food-based state. There are very few factories in Kelantan, a stark contrast with neighboring Terengganu, which has giant petrochemical processing facilities and plastic factories.

Officials in the United Malays National Organization, the main component of the governing coalition, play down the significance of the Islamic party's victory in the by-election in the Arau district of Perlis state. That victory gave the party a total of 8 seats out of 192 in the national Parliament. "Arau was complacency," said Annuar Musa, the highest United Malays official in Kelantan and a federal minister. "It was good as an early warning system."

There is a hitch in Mr. Aziz's election strategy. The leader's simple, nonmaterialistic approach to life may be the party's Achilles heel: The state's finances are suffering with lower timber sales this year, an indication that however hard officials try, Kelantan is linked to the outside world and the crisis that it has brought.

A United Malays official with links to the state's financial data said Kelantan may not be able to pay salaries by September if outside money is not found.

That may be grandstanding. Nonetheless, Mr. Aziz acknowledged the problems with timber revenues and said Kelantan may seek money from the federal government this year.

"Since coming to power nine years ago, we have never borrowed money from the federal government," Mr. Aziz said. "So maybe this time we will ask for a soft loan." Details of that loan could be worked out when Mr. Mahathir visits the state later this month.

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