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160 Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid and Che Hamdan Che Mohd Razali

UMNO’s doomsday prognostications that Malay-Muslims will lose out in
PH’s New Malaysia (Parkaran 2018).
With regard to Islamist politics, if PAS members get dragged, as well, into
the 1MDB scandal as alleged bene ciaries of money-laundering activities, great
disappointment will prevail among the Malay masses. Such a development
might prove enough to overcome ethno-religious fears, making possible a
scenario of conservative Malay-Muslims’ transferring their loyalties to Malay-
led PH component parties. According to former PAS deputy president, then
inaugural Amanah president, Mohamad Sabu, illicit funds were, in fact,
channelled to PAS through in uential young leaders within the party, for
the speci c purpose of chasing out PAS’s ‘progressives’ from the party, thus
breaking it up (Parti Amanah Negara 2018).
IKSIM, meanwhile, has been embroiled in a war of words with PH’s new
minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of religious a airs,
Mujahid Yusof Rawa, who is also Amanah vice president and son of PAS’s
rst Murshid al-‘Am, Yusof Rawa, under its post-1982 kepimpinan ulama.
Branded a ‘liberal’ in IKSIM roadshows prior to GE14, Mujahid has not been
on good terms with IKSIM since his earlier days as an opposition politician,
even questioning its combative approach in Parliament (Chow 2017; Khairil
2017). Once PH assumed power at the federal level, IKSIM complained
that its sta salaries had been frozen (Bernama 2018), to which Mujahid
replied by raising issues of nancial impropriety on IKSIM’s part (Choong
2018). Undeterred by the fact that it is a federal agency, IKSIM responded
unrepentantly on its website to Mujahid’s allegations (IKSIM 2018a, 2018b)
and netizens contrasted Mujahid’s brash treatment of IKSIM with the courtesy
he extended to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community
(Wartawan Menara 2018b). IKSIM has pushed back against allegations that,
having served as a tool of BN and UMNO, it should be dismantled (Kosmo
2018; Ku Faris 2018), yet continues to reiterate its suspicion of DAP’s ulterior
motives and belief that the party threatens the status of Islam as state religion
(Engku Ahmad Fadzil 2018c). In other words, while UMNO may have lost
the election, for its allies outside the party, the battle continues.

Conclusion
Despite over 60 years of uninterrupted nation-building under BN, consensus
on the character of Malaysia’s national identity still eludes the various ethnic
and religious groups that make up the country. Since Malaysia’s political
reconstruction post-1969 in particular, Malaysian nationhood has veered

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