THE GATHERING OF THE converted met yesterday (12 March 2006) to discuss the inexhorable move in Malaysia to be an Islamic State. No governmnent or official representative was there to give its view. That is not to say no UMNO representative was there. He was, but to chart his own support base outside UMNO, after his suspension as an UMNO member. Would he have said what he did had he been in the good books of the party? He got claps and cheers but did he mean what he said? Would his speech have been different had he been an official UMNO representative? No official explanation is given at the best of times for moves taken about Islam and its role in Malaysia. Every one shies of discussing it, is presumed not to discuss it, especially by non-Muslims. So, Malaysia becomes Islamic by default. The non-Malay political parties in the National Front will not discuss, even with UMNO, and will agree with any moves on Islam that UMNO takes. As they did, as they would do if pesky questions about it are asked by opposition members of parliament.

THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO the Health Ministry, Dato' S. Sothinathan, was suspended for three months because he defied a government decision. He had immunity when he complained, in Parliament. But when ten non-Muslim cabinet ministers protested in public what they had in the cabinet sessions agreed, probably because they had to show their communities they meant well, there was recriminations and explanations, but no action against them. Their Malay ministerial colleagues, notably Dato' Nazri Aziz, in criticising them, said they agreed with an Islamic State. But it showed that the cabinet is split. The prime minister, Pak Lah, said he was unhappy at the move, which was the first since independence. But the more the ministers talked, the more it became clear that the Malay and non-Malay ministers disagreed. In cabinet, these ten ministers – why was another minister, Mr Kayveas, left out? – went along with the proposal. But they had now to take the decision to show they looked after their community's interest. But like the ten ministers, Pak Lah makes confusing statements. National Front MPs make it worse by saying the ten were off base, they did not know Islam, and their protests must be ignored. So the National Front to bring unity to this country brings disunity instead!

This is clearly unconstitutional, as the National Front now feels. It has passed laws which turned Malaysia into an Islamic State, allowed its civil servants in its IRD to do what it liked, and if the non-Muslims and others protested, they are told to shut up. The National Front came a cropper in passing these laws because it assumed that since it had won election after election since independence with more than two-thirds majority, it could do as it liked. The non-Malay party leaders in the cabinet are there to feather their own nests, not look after the community the represent. They become willing henchmen to UMNO, the lead party in the National Front, plans. In the early days of independence, the UMNO president, then as now also the prime minister, would not pass any law that the MCA or MIC leader did not agree; today these leaders, and others, would make sure UMNO would have its way. Every unconstitutional act passed by UMNO had their support.

The National Front is blamed for this. It wants to turn the country into an Islamic State. It allows extremist Islamic action to put the non-Muslim on notice. It usually comes out with a multiracial statement to offset, in the public eye, their most extreme Islamic behaviour. This extremist behaviour is supported by the non-Muslim parties in the National Front. Malaysia is an Islamic State because the MCA, MIC, Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia, the non-Muslim parties in East Malaysia like the Partai Bersatu Sabah and Sarawak National Party. It preaches multiracial tolerance as a superficial front to carry out its Muslim agenda. The National Front is in trouble if it carries out a racialist policy while preaching multiracialism. It may not show itslelf now, but it would in time. Pak Lah's difficulty is he cannot agree for fear of the opposition in UMNO, the lead party in the National Front.

Over the years, the opposition parties often take the law into their hands. Harakah, the PAS party organ, is published twice monthly, and is sold to the general public, though it cannot, and gets its views heard throughout the land. It sells more than 200,000 copies every issue, and more during elections or byelections. It has a multiracial leadership because eight of its pages are in English. It is read avidly because it contains the alternative point of view, a refreshing change from the Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil newspapers which carry only the National Front point of view. It carries the views of opposition leaders only when they support the National Front views, or if they are in trouble. The opposition leaders, instead of fighting the existing position of the National Front, take the line of least resistance, and survive in the National Front shadow. But there are exceptions. PAS is committed to an Islamic State as it proclaimed when the religious wing broke off from UMNO in 1951. The Parti Rakyat Malaysia remained a thinking man's party, and the rump after its split with the Parti Socialis Malaysia has joined Parti Keadilan Rakyat, formed to get Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim from jail. The other political parties do not matter because it is personality splits with parties in the National Front that formed them, and they would usually like to replace their alter egos in the National Front. National Front leaders will not admit it but the views although publicly decried is quietly taken as its.

The politicians who say otherwise are off their heads or know which way their bread is buttered. The Islamic agenda has taken over with even UMNO joining it. It is UMNO's death wish, for in the end, it will be the Islamists and the local educated who will take over. That the British has won, for the moment, is clear. It remains in power through their local satraps in what used to be British terroritories. But this will be their downfall. The constitutions have been amended, as it has in Malaysia, to remove their secular preference for a religious state. And this is driven by the very people it has supported. Malaysia is now as Islamic State, made in fear by UMNO of the Islamically inclined PAS. It made the laws in Kelantan and Trengganu states that allowed Islamic practices, which PAS made use of to widen their agenda, which is a nation-wide Islamic State.

It is not an easy transition. The divide is still there, the traditional ulamas who see their role as no more than the Islamisation of Malaysia and the newer leaders who believe they must move with the times. For without power, no political plan can work. But the PAS president, Ustadz Haji Hadi Awang, turned out to be a far shrewder politicians than any in PAS could dare hope. He understands politics and the use of power better than most politicians. He had come to power by accident, after the sudden death of its charismatic leader, Dato' Fadhil Noor, who died on the operating table. He remains a forbidding figure but with a mind that accepts a view, even on Islam, other than his own. I have found, in my many talks with him over the years – I first met him in 1982 – that for all his presumed obscurantist thinking, he is far more liberal in his views that I have found many ulema to be. He believes in an Islamic State but he realises why it would not be easy if he cannot carry all the Malays and many non-Malays with him. I dare say that few PAS leaders could have presided over such dramatic changes as in the muktamar.

It went about it by first declaring Malaysia an Islamic State. It would not debate this in Parliament or obtain the consensus of the Conference of Rulers, whose assent on matters Islamic must be obtained. Instead, Dr Mahathir, then prime minister, viewed it as a natural consequence of Malaysia and its commitment to the ideals of Islam. It did not say what it was or how it changed Malaysian polity, only that it is now unchallengeable that Malaysia is an Islamic State.

PAS has not wavered in wanting to turn Malaysia into an Islamic State in which the syaria rules. Its strength was in the Malay majority states of Perlis, Kedah, Kelantan, Trengganu. But it crept into the Malaysian heartland as UMNO lost its hold on the Malay cultural and feudal ground. To a degree that UMNO must be avowedly Islamic to fight for a Malay ground that was unquestionably its.

It reflected an infighting within the ulamaks and the fundamentalist Islam supporters on the course of a future Malaysian Islamic State. Once PAS kept its fundamentalist image in check with a worldview that emanated confidence, with a party president always from the secularly educated Islamicists from the more cosmopolitan west coast of peninsular Malaysia; but when Dato' Fadhil Noor died, the deputy president, Tok Guru Dato' Seri Abdul Hadi Awang, took over.

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