Islamic rule faces a test in Malaysia
International Herald Tribune
December 6, 2005
Seth Mydans

PASIR MAS, Malaysia A blizzard of streamers and bunting fills the streets of this rural town as a small election with big implications approaches, but after dark its streets are as empty and silent as a wartime blackout.

By day there are crowds and motorcades and speeches by major political figures from elsewhere. At night Pasir Mas shuts down, like everywhere else in northeastern Kelantan state, where a regional Islamic government has banned most kinds of evening entertainment.

For more than a decade, Kelantan has been the home of Malaysia's experiment with Islamic government, an anomaly in a country that is seen as an exemplar of modern, moderate Islam.

That experiment is now in retreat, and a special election here Tuesday, involving just 18,000 registered voters, has become an intense battleground as a gauge of the national mood.

On one recent day, much of Malaysia's cabinet was touring the rural constituency of Pengkalan Pasir, led by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who promised, among other things, to build a university here in one of the country's poorest states.

"In the last general election the ruling party managed to put a halt to the so-called green march," said Abdul Razak Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center, a research firm in Kuala Lumpur, referring to the color associated with Islam. The Islamic party, Parti Islam se-Malaysia, or PAS, lost control of neighboring Trengganu state, the only other place it had gained power.

PAS retained control of Kelantan in that election, in 2004, but by a margin of only 24 to 21 seats in the local Parliament. The current special election was called when one of its members died in October, and a loss would leave the Islamic party with a majority of just one seat.

"In the last years a more moderate face of PAS has emerged," Razak said. "This is a clear sign that even PAS recognizes that in Malaysia you have to go into a moderate mode. To go on a more radical and extreme view of Islam will not cut any ice with the public."

This is true of Southeast Asia in general, said Chandra Muzaffar, a leading political analyst in Kuala Lumpur. Although Islamic radicalism has made itself felt in recent years, it has not gained a large public following.

"This would be against the grain with the way Islam is practiced in this region," Chandra said. "I think Malaysian Muslims, like Indonesian Muslims and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, are not comfortable with this sort of very rigid, dogmatic approach to religion."

Malaysia's ruling party, known as UMNO, advocates a more moderate form of Islam, which it calls "hadhari," and it is offering that nationwide alternative to the voters here in Tuesday's election.

"PAS is Islam; UMNO is also Islam," Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said at a recent campaign rally here. "The question is what sort of Islam do you want?"

Kelantan's chief minister, Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, sounded out of tune not long ago when he advocated polygamy to rescue unmarried women from becoming "aged virgins." In an interview, Hatta Ramli, a liberal member of PAS, distanced the party from fundamentalist talk like that.

"The issue of implementing Shariah law is not top in our campaign," he said. "Kelantan is our model. It's all in place here in Kelantan. People can come in and observe and if they are fearful they can see what is going on."

If this is the model, it is a retreat from the time when PAS had ambitions of creating a strict Islamic state with segregation of the sexes and laws sanctioning stoning and amputation.

Alcohol, dancing, movies and gambling are still forbidden today in Kelantan, and most women cover their heads in compliance with local government directives. On a billboard advertising shampoo in the state capital, Kota Bharu, a row of seven smiling women hide their hair under Muslim head scarves.

But the Kelantan government has softened its religious pronouncements and has begun to loosen its bans on evening entertainment, allowing traditional theater and shadow-puppet plays. It has even staged a rock concert and a fashion show.

It appears to have stopped trying to enforce one of its more showy decrees - separate supermarket lines for women and men.

In the Pacific Hypermarket, as in other markets in Kota Bharu, men and women stand together at checkout counters, ignoring little stick-figure pictures overhead that indicated who should go where.

"At first, the authorities enforced the rule," said Rusmini Hakim, assistant manager of cashiers at the market. "But people made a fuss. And now no one comes around any more to check on us."

The PAS candidate in the special election is a moderate businessman, Hanifa Ahmad, rather than a religious leader, and the party has focused its campaign on development and social justice, instead of religion. The former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, a moderate Muslim with a large popular following, has joined the campaign in support of PAS, along with the opposition party Keadilan.

A former member of the governing party who crossed swords with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Anwar was released last year from a prison term that most analysts saw as politically motivated.

The Kelantan campaign marks his return to electoral politics, but his political future remains difficult because of opposition to him within the dominant party, UMNO.

Despite its broad national implications, the election in Pasir Mas is a reminder of the local nature of politics. The race is so close that analysts say the decisive ballots are held by 938 ethnic Chinese voters, who are mainly Buddhist.

Their vote, in turn, has been influenced by a recent national scandal that has nothing to do with Islam. Last month four Chinese women accused the police in the capital of forcing them to strip and perform a series of squatting exercises.

The government in Kuala Lumpur is investigating the incident vigorously to calm an outcry both within China and among ethnic Chinese throughout the region.

The government is particularly concerned with mollifying Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China, who is scheduled to visit next week. At least as important an audience, though, are the 938 rural residents of Pengakalan Pasir whose vote will help signal the direction of Islamic government in Malaysia.

Copyright © 2005 the International Herald Tribune