Page 165 - Towards_a_New_Malaysia_The_2018_Election_and_Its_6146371_(z-lib.org)

150 Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali

conceive as a true Islamic polity. However much attention centred on political
parties and key personalities in Malaysia’s 14th general election (GE14), these
organisations played signi cant roles, as well, in shaping electoral discourse
and strategies. Nevertheless, while race and religion remain key factors in
Malaysian political priorities and a liations, the sort of Islamist framing
UMNO and its NGO allies promoted proved insu cient to rescue a troubled
BN from a forti ed opposition challenge in GE14.

e Background Setting

For Islamist activists to make the jump to parties was not new. For instance,
many former Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM, Muslim Youth Movement
of Malaysia) activists had joined UMNO following then-soon-to-be Deputy
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, in the early 1980s. When in 1999, under the
banner of BA, PAS collaborated with the Democratic Action Party (DAP)
and the new Parti Keadilan Nasional (Keadilan, National Justice Party), led
by Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, wife of the now-deposed Anwar, this ABIM
cohort was among the core leaders of Keadilan, which in 2003 morphed into
Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR, People’s Justice Party). Former ABIM stalwarts
have also appeared consistently within the ranks of other Malay-Muslim-led
political parties (Aljunied 2016). Adoption of Islam as a primary plank of
national governance has been attributed to these ABIM activists, many of
whom remained in UMNO and the government after Anwar’s humiliating
exit (Ahmad Fauzi 2008). eir impact upon decision-making reverberated
throughout federal-level Islamic institutions such as the Yayasan Dakwah
Islamiah Malaysia (YADIM, Islamic Missionary Foundation of Malaysia)
and the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM), e ectively
transforming Malaysia into a quasi-Islamic state during Dr Mahathir’s rst
prime ministerial tenure (1981–2003), sans the formal installation of sharia as
the country’s de nitive law (Martinez 2001).
By the time Dr Mahathir retired as prime minister in October 2003,
forces of Islamism and religious conservatism had burgeoned into a new class
of religio-political elites who regarded themselves as Islam’s internal agents
in realizing Malaysia’s seemingly destined path towards an ‘Islamic state’.
Abdullah Badawi’s subsequent administration faced numerous di culties in
controlling a burgeoning Islamic o cialdom that was increasingly de ning, in
rigid terms, the boundaries of Muslim–non-Muslim engagements and intra-
Muslim relations in Malaysia’s pluralistic society (Mohamed Nawab 2017).
Najib Razak, Abdullah Badawi’s successor, exacerbated the already worrying

This content downloaded from 139.80.253.0 on Fri, 06 Nov 2020 04:22:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms