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Islam and Its Racial Dynamics in Malaysia’s 14th General Election 159

While for many Malaysians, the outcome of GE14 was certainly cause
for rejoicing, deeper analyses indicate that race and religion remain politically
potent in Malaysia. Merdeka Center surveys indicate clearly racialized voting
patterns: Malay votes for PH stood at only 25–30 per cent, as compared with
95 per cent of Chinese and 70–75 per cent of Indians. e Malay vote split
three ways, with 35–40 per cent supporting BN and the balance backing PAS
(Hazlin 2018; see also Ting’s and Hew’s chapters in particular, this volume). In
peninsular Malaysia’s strongly Malay-majority north and northeast, PAS did
exceptionally well, maintaining the reins of government in Kelantan, trouncing
BN in Terengganu, and almost forcing the Kedah state legislature into a hung
assembly by bagging 15 seats to PH’s 18 and BN’s mere 3. Although Dr
Mahathir helped in the rural Malay heartlands, PH still su ers a credibility
de cit in Malay-majority areas (Cheng, Ng, and Faris 2018). However much
UMNO focused before the election on stoking unease with DAP’s presence
in PH among the Malay-Muslim masses, it stands to bene t more from a
di erent dynamic: those voters continue to nd it di cult to identify with
their urban-based, middle-class counterparts in PH’s Malay-led parties, even
openly Islamist ones such as Amanah (Sheith Khidhir 2018; Ong 2018).
All the same, post-GE14, that same scaremongering seems likely to persist
and increase, as UMNO and PAS share both a common enemy and a common
denominator. e positions of orthodox Islamists in PAS and bureaucratic
Islamists in UMNO continue to converge as they together face a newly
dominant non-Islamist PH ruling bloc. To an extent not seen since their
brief alliance under BN in the mid-1970s, PAS and UMNO collaborated for
Selangor state by-elections in Sungai Kandis on 4 August and Seri Setia on
8 September 2018. e parties refrained from both putting up candidates,
so as to avoid splitting opposition votes against the incumbent PH (Azman
2018; Malaysiakini 2018d; Mohd Anwar 2018). Moreover, at Sungai Kandis,
UMNO former Deputy Minister Tajuddin Abdul Rahman spewed IKSIM-
like racial-religious rhetoric, referring to the PH government as Christian-
controlled. (Former UMNO Youth leader Khairy Jamaluddin, who has been
trying to push UMNO toward a more inclusive position, was aghast [Lee
2018; Malaysiakini 2018e].) Such sentiments coloured IKSIM’s strident
opposition, too, to the PH government’s appointment of Tommy omas, an
ethnic-Indian, Christian Malaysian, as attorney general (Wartawan Menara
2018a; Abdul Karim 2018a). If anything, PH’s having more non-Muslim
than Muslim MPs and its decision to appoint non-Muslims to hold strategic
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positions such as nance minister and chief justice have added fuel to

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