Religion and Society in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. 260 pp. US$99.00, cloth. ISBN 978-90-8964-576-0.
What is the role of Islam in Malaysian politics and society? To what extent can Malaysia continue to play the role of a moderate, pluralist, Western-friendly, Muslim nation in Southeast Asia? More ominously, is Malaysia still immune to the hard Islamist currents that have been entrenched in global politics post-9/11? These and other fascinating questions are covered in Farish A. Noor’s very timely The Malaysian Islamic Party PAS 1951–2013: Islamism in a Mottled Nation. Noor focuses on Malaysia’s Islamist opposition political party, Partai Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), as a case study through which to demonstrate how Islamist politics are dynamic and flexible, adapting to the character of the local political and cultural context. According to Noor, Islamist politics under the banner of PAS have been integral to Malaysian politics and history, from pre-independence to modernist nation building. Noor first locates the founding of the party to then colonial Malaya as PAS struggled to reconcile its desire for a doctrinally pure Islamic state or accommodate itself with a secular and multi-ethnic Malaysian nation-state. Noor then covers the party’s transformation into a vehicle for Malay political identity as it flirted with expressively ethno-nationalist politics in the 1950s and 1960s. The impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the global Islamist movement that it spawned dominates Noor’s examination of the party in the 1980s and 1990s. PAS’s recent co-operation post-2008 with other opposition parties to build a genuinely alternative multi-ethnic power sharing coalition, Pakatan Rakyat, comprises the final part of Noor’s sharp and incisive historical narrative of PAS. Finally, Noor argues that these attempts at political bridge building could translate into PAS developing its own model of “Islamist democracy,” as the party has evolved to meet the demands of Malaysia’s changing society in the era of “the war on terror.”
One of the major strengths of the volume is simply the huge amount of new information presented here about the historical origins of PAS, its important political leaders and personalities, and insider information regarding internal conflicts between moderates and hardliners. Noor as a local Malaysian scholar now based in Singapore has spent many years researching PAS and developing contacts with local cadres. This expertise with the subject matter is clearly demonstrated in his nuanced and careful analysis of PAS, as both an ideological Islamist movement striving for sharia and as a pragmatic political party seeking power by working with opposition secular Malay nationalist and minority non-Malay parties. In this respect, Noor takes PAS seriously on its own terms, and does not examine the party through the often awkward lenses of security and anti-terrorism studies.
One of the attributes of good scholarship is a work that often raises many questions that it cannot answer. Noor concludes his work with optimism that PAS could continue to play a constructive role in the multi-ethnic opposition by working with its allies and toning down its more hard-lined Islamist policies. However, PAS’s abortive pivot towards an “Islamist democracy” remains one of the great “what ifs” of Malaysian politics. Writing in 2014, Noor could not directly foresee the splintering of PAS in early 2015 as party moderates walked away from the party to found their own competing Islamist political party, Amanah. The consequential fracturing of the Pakatan Rakyat alliance as the two parties began to compete for the Islamist constituency in Malaysian politics weakened Malaysia’s diverse and multi-faceted opposition. Noor’s great contribution is to provide context for this new intriguing political development in contemporary Malaysia, appreciating that Islamism in Malaysia is a dynamic movement, not monolithic or unchanging.
Trevor W. Preston
Centennial College, Toronto, Canada
pp. 413-414