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Women in Malaysian Islamist Politics 181

It would be wrong to categorize this styling, uncritically, as ‘traditionally’
Malay, even though this is a view often heard in Malaysia. In a brilliant
discussion of ethnographic materials she and other scholars have collected over
time, Patricia Sloane-White shows that, for a long time, rural Malay women
were able to subvert patriarchal norms through strategies like bantering and
ridiculing men. In recent years, this ability to speak out and bend o cial
gender norms has been, quite literally, ‘silenced’ as the result of an increasingly
conservative and dominant interpretation of Islamic law as a guiding principle
in everyday life (Sloane-White 2017: 113–21). Female popular preachers, my
own research shows, are among the main exemplars of this new pious persona,
that is, of women who are ‘gentle’ (halus), not ‘crude’ (kasar), and who are
patient, caring, and restrained. Politicians in PAS and Amanah, belonging to
the same generation and speaking partly to the same audiences, need to respond
to this modern culture of cultivating a ‘soft’ and subdued public presence.
Let me add some nuance. e transformation of the subversive rural ‘Malay’
woman into the subdued urban ‘Muslim’ woman should not be understood
in terms of religious interpretation only. It also results, as Sloane-White’s work
suggests, from the fact that women have moved, gradually and successfully,
from the domestic spheres of village and family to the (semi-)public spheres of
salaried work, associational life, business, and politics. e transformation is
contingent, in other words, on both the ‘feminization’ and the ‘Islamization’
of the public sphere in Malaysia (Kloos 2019: 166–8). Secondly, this shift
does not mean that the subversive potential of Malay womanhood has entirely
disappeared. e generally masculine world of politics is an example of a sphere
in which it still thrives. Ordinary voters, assistants, members of their entourages,
and other politicians described Mariah and Zailah as fearless, upfront, con dent
to speak in public and with men, and—particularly Zailah—as ‘loud’. I was
also told, on multiple occasions, that their performances were ‘untypical’ for
Malay women (a euphemism, perhaps, for ‘inappropriate’). A young man in
the PAS communications o ce in Kota Bharu impressed on me the corporeal
aspects of this, particularly in the minds of men. In characterizing Zailah, he
praised her strength, energy and commitment, referring several times, in a chat
that lasted less than ten minutes, to her ‘big body’ (tubuh besar). ‘Look’, he
said, grabbing my shoulders and giving me a good shaking, ‘you’re just small!’
In GE14 both PAS and Amanah continued the trend of elding women
professionals. Returning to the recent election, I will examine two speci c
moments, in two di erent campaigns, that manifested the tension between this
strategy and the dissemination of conservative ideals of Malay womanhood.
I concentrate on campaigns in socially and demographically unfavourable

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