Dr Mahathir is caught in the fallout. He is critical of the retired brigadier mullah, and has all but insulated himself from him. It is Dr Hamid Othman who has his ear. This makes the animosity between them all the more acrimonious. When Dato' Hamid Zainal Abidin's daughter was married, the one notable personage uninvited was Dr Hamid. He goes out of his way to isolate any in Tabung Haji thought to be close to Dr Hamid. Dr Mahathir knows that if this continues in this fashion, Tabung Haji could turn out to be a monumental flop, one he cannot afford to in his new found fervour of Malaysia as a fundamentalist Islamic State. More worrying for him must be that the Audit Department, the Public Services Department, and the Anti-Corruption Agency have all moved in to investigate. Much of what is done under present management is outside the legally mandated procedures for statutory bodies.

The imposition of hudud laws in Trengganu is more political than it appears. PAS throws a dare at UMNO which cannot accept it. Especially when Dr Mahathir insists Malaysia is an Islamic State. It is PAS's latest riposte to UMNO which denies the state the petroleum royalty payments it solemnly agreed to pay it. And uses that money to undermine the state. All it ensures is a continual estrangement between the state and the centre. PAS is out to irritate. The more extreme its move, the more embarrassed UMNO. The hudud laws has a personal element: BN, especially UMNO, high and mighty keep undergraduates from the two states as mistresses. These women live in shanties or in overcrowded rooms, have barely enough to exist, their families cannot help out, and are forced to such arrangements to survive; To discuss it, as one PAS member from Trengganu told me, "demeans us, and we suffer in silence." The hudud laws, he argues, is one way to bring this out into the open by arresting the bigwigs. "It may not succeed," he says, "and the fellow could move heaven and earth in the court to free him. It puts UMNO even more into theocratic misery." When policy is not for the common good, but for a communal, religious or personal vendetta, political capriciousness sets in, the national agenda is lost, and the state descends into anarchy.

I once asked him about this. His reply was typical: "There is no one way that is as good or as bad as any other. And none so good that it cannot be improved with discussion." It is not, he said, a sign of frustration or confrontation; rather, it is a commitment towards an Islamic State which should come with debate and discussion. It did not reflect a split in the party or that the parties did not like each other.

The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, shocked the UMNO General Assembly this afternoon (22 June 2002) when he abruptly resigned from all party and official positions. The UMNO Supreme Council promptly met in emergency session to reject it. It is not clear if he would reconsider it. The UMNO General Assembly, which began THursday, was a crucial one for Dr Mahathir, for he had to wean back the Malay ground which disappeared after how he mistreated his former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Dr Mahathir had turned the tables on the opposition in recent months as he redefined the political agenda to insist Malaysia is a fundamentalist Islamic State pursuing a "genuine" Islamic agenda, one in complete antipathy to PAS's version of one in which he alleged the PAS God is a thug. The Opposition itself is in a quandry about its own insecurities and inconsistencies.

This, in the view of several delegates, including an UMNO official holder and cabinet minister, is what is so dangerous for his successor. The delegates were sure he is no more the force in UMNO he once was. But he commits his successor to a course -- especially with regard to Malaysia as a fundamentalist Islamic State -- he could not carry through. Indeed, no one but Dr Mahathir has spoken of Malaysia as a fundamentalist state, and his remarks has upset some of his closest supporters. The National Front partners are struck dumb in horrified silence and fear the prospect of an electoral rout if the non-Malay voter decides he has had enough of these UMNO satraps in the National Front. But it also affects mainstream UMNO. Dr Mahathir takes this step to wean back the Malay support he lost when he, as feudal leader, humuliated his principal chieftain, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. In the meanwhile, while Dato' Seri Anwar has all but disappeared from the Malay consciousnessness, Dr Mahathir has yet to be forgiven for his breach of the feudal code.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, without consultation or debate, proclaims Malaysia to be an Islamic fundamentalist state. What he means to be fundamentalist is not President Bush's definition. What matters in the world outside, whether he likes it or not, is that the Bush definition is what is accepted. What this proclamation also reveals is the irrelevance and impotency of the National Front UMNO leads. For if Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi Awang or some PAS worthy had said what Dr Mahathir did, the likes of Dato' Seri Ling Liong Sik and Dato' Seri S. Samy Vellu would be let loose to attack him. This time there is total silence. Especially when the Prime Minister says his and UMNO's vision of a fundamentalist Islamic State is different from PAS' though both now adhere to the principle of it.

The arrest of the DAP chairman, Mr Lim Kit Siang, in Ipoh for sedition, because he distributed a leaflet opposing the imposition of Islamic law, raises an interesting conundrum: it now appears discussing the imposition of Islamic law is a seditious offence. Until now it had to do with questioning Malay rights and privileges, the position of the sultans (unless it is UMNO and BN which questions it), Islam as the official religion, and Malay as the official language. Suddenly, it is now verboten for Malaysians to question if Malaysia is an Islamic State. The police in Ipoh would not have acted except under orders. Did the police consult the Attorney-General Chambers that what it did was correct? If it did, as one must assume it did, it is, willy nilly, now official policy. If it did not, the Attorney-General Chambers should have struck it down. Since that did not, it is fair to assume what the police did had the government's unalloyed blessings.

It is not polygamy and rape that should concern Malaysian Muslims and Malays. It should be the larger issue of an Islamic State. This is wished away in offhanded remarks of the prime minister and in the political agenda of PAS.

The Trengganu mentri besar, Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, is in no doubt opposition to the state's Hudud Bill, which provides for equality of the civil law with Islamic law, is misunderstood. If those opposed knew the "facts", they would not. Since they do not, he infers it is their duty to be, therefore, there is nothing wrong with the Syariah Criminal Bill. Women's organisations are horrified a rape who could not prove her rape could be guilty of slander and punished severely. The fundamental issue here is if the state assembly could pass a law that conflicts with the Federal constitution. It cannot. That it does means it can. The constitution is amended to give equal status to civil and Islamic law. Since the states are responsible for how Islam is administered in the states, they can enact laws that one they once could not. Which is why the National Front (BN) and UMNO cannot openly confront the Trengganu government on this. The BN is also committed to an Islamic State in Malaysia; indeed, the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, insists it already is.

Worse, the debate is to raise the ire of constituents than to discuss the basics. Whatever the constitution might insist, it is settled Malaysia is an Islamic State, the hudud law is here to stay, and all one can now do is to negotiate a less extreme punishment. UMNO, the main party in the National Front (BN), imposed hudud laws in Kelantan when it was in power there. When PAS defeated it in 1990, and enhanced the hudud laws, it was UMNO which cried foul. But it was UMNO which established the principles which PAS took advantage. So in Trengganu. The non-Malay partners in BN did not rigorously challenge these sharp constitutional changes, but now accuse PAS of pursuing an Islamic State when for PAS it is a hope while BN has the means to enforce it.

The Opposition is weak, but UMNO and BN is weaker. The Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), as always, harped on its vision of a Islamic theological Malaysia. UMNO, in its moment of weakness, turned to Islam as its political platform in the hope the Malay would turn to it than PAS. Malaysia is an Islamic State, the Prime Minister thundered, but he would not allow it discussed in Parliament. He did not want a debate with PAS on it but suddenly politics in Malaysia is Islamic centred. It is, as the Shah of Iran found to his eternal cost, not one UMNO could win. Like the Shah, Dr Mahathir adopts Islam to out-PAS PAS's theocratic agenda. When he declared Malaysia an Islamic State, the PAS mentri besar of Kelantan, Dato' Nik Aziz Nik Mat, promply described it an instant Islamic State. That pushed the debate out of the public eye. Dr Mahathir does not talk of it any more. UMNO is defensive in matters of Islam yet again. But he cannot walk away from it without another conflagration in UMNO.

So, the names of Malaysia's non-Malay heroes would be removed as surely as night follows day, justified with creative reasons that show nothing but cynicism for the contributions of any but the Malay. This must only increase. The BN and UMNO is now wedded to an Islamic, not a Malaysian, world, in which the non-Malaysian Muslim gets preference for a Malaysian non-Malay. This is already so in several areas of public administration. With the BN declaring Malaysia an Islamic State, but refusing to have it debated in Parliament, it blinked. It shows its fear of wanting to debate it with its political enemy, PAS, and forces it through. When the government itself shortchanges its people over such an important change to the country's status, other unconstitutional means would be used by civil servant Malay and Islamic activists.

There is now not only mud on its face, but it also questions its commitment to an Islamic State. If it cannot get some one more credible than ISCNA to bat for it in such a contentious issue, its high moral Islamic ground cannot pass muster. But it cannot get the Islamic organisations that matter on its side to accept Dato' Seri Anwar deserves what he got; they seem to think otherwise.

But his larger vision of an Islamic State now haunts him. He has designs of Malaysia as the centre of the next Islamic empire after the Ottomans. To prove it, he spends a minimum of RM1,000 million to build a convention centre and 85 mini palaces in Putra Jaya for the Organisation of Islamic Countries conference next year. The convention hall alone is, without furnishings, RM700 million. His description of Malaysia as an Islamic State is in line with that. And to prove his credentials he was not beyond getting involved in funding Islamic militancy. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. And he could not get the Islamic nations to accept him as a comrade-in-arms if he was not about to do what they do.

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