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Islam and Its Racial Dynamics in

Malaysia’s 14th General Election

Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali 1

at Malaysian politics has been coloured by race and religion re ects the
composition of the population. Political Islam, or Islamism, in Malaysia has
traditionally pitted the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO),
conventionally viewed as a secular Malay nationalist party, against Parti
Islam SeMalaysia (PAS, Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party), which has undergone
transformation from being an o shoot of UMNO’s religious wing in 1951,
to a party that combined the ideals of both Islam and Malay nationalism in
the 1960s, to a fundamentalist party during the post-Iranian revolution years
of the 1980s, to a major component of the cross-ethnic post-1998 Reformasi
(reformation) movement. Reformasi saw PAS throw in its lot with the Barisan
Alternatif (BA, Alternative Front, 1999–2001), then Pakatan Rakyat (PR,
People’s Pact, 2008–15) opposition alliances. Supplanting PR—with the new
Parti Amanah Negara (Amanah, National Trust Party) in place of PAS, and
now in government—is the Pakatan Harapan (PH, Alliance of Hope) coalition.
A cardinal feature of contemporary Malaysian Islam has been an upsurge
of Islamism, corresponding to the Islamic resurgence phenomenon of the
1970s–80s, when Islamic values, norms, gures, and institutions penetrated
into the country’s corridors of power. e reassertion of Islam in public life
transformed the nature of both inter-religious and intra-Muslim relations
and political activities. Especially important to Islamist politics in Malaysia
have been the versatility, emergence, phasing out, and re-emergence of
diverse nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that do not take part directly
in electoral politics, but instead strive to live up to the ideals of what they

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