‘PAS for all’ is a flight from reality

 

By Terence Netto

It’s inevitable that as the party with the most numbers of seats (43) in Parliament, PAS would want to make the federal government.

For that it has at the next general election to gain major support from among non-Muslim voters.

No Malay/Muslim party can obtain a plurality that would enable it to rule the country alone.

It has to obtain non-Malay support. For that, it has to make nice with non-Malay political groups.

These days PAS, the biggest Islamist political party, puts it out that it has long been nice to non-Malays.

It says in the north-eastern states it has ruled and continues to do so, it has not done anything to infringe the rights of non-Malays.

As an earnest of its desire to gain federal power, PAS has revived a slogan – “PAS for all” – it raised at the 12th general election in 2008 when the party cooperated with DAP and PKR to deny BN its supermajority in Parliament.

After that success, PAS entered an alliance with DAP and PKR to form Pakatan Rakyat.

The alliance not only failed to win GE13 but also split asunder because PAS, under president Hadi Awang’s leadership that became newly unconstrained by the death in 2014 of its PR-supporting spiritual leader Nik Aziz Nik Mat, withdrew from the pact.

Hadi proceeded to preside over the defeat of its progressive wing in internal party elections in 2015.

The progressives, fostered by Hadi’s predecessor Fadzil Noor and encouraged by Nik Aziz, were compelled to leave to form the splinter Amanah, which then allied itself to DAP and PKR in a renamed alliance, Pakatan Harapan.

The unhappy saga of the federal power-gaining PH, led briefly by Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and the episode of Anwar Ibrahim’s fledgling success at forming the federal government in November 2022 after GE15, has firmly taught major political parties they cannot rule Malaysia singly.

PAS now accepts this reality but disdains the hard work it has to do by claiming that the negative non-Muslim perception of it is the nefarious work of DAP, even of PKR.

This is false.

Non-Muslim fear of PAS has been influenced by what they conclude about Islamic rule from what they have seen of that rule in Iran, Pakistan and the Indonesian territory of Aceh.

They see mullah rule in Iran as oppressive and headed for overthrow; they view Pakistan as constantly unstable and ungovernable; and they see Aceh as an anomalous outlier in a general view of Indonesia as a country that is progressively heading for better things.

PAS should not kid itself as to who is responsible for the generally negative view of non-Muslims in Malaysia about Islamic rule.

Reinforcing matters, non-Muslims have witnessed the flight in recent decades of millions of Muslim refugees from war-torn areas of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa to Europe.

Though safer in the places they have fled to, these Muslims are unhappy.

The reason: they are uncomfortable with the western values they encounter.

The conclusion: Islamic culture is incompatible with Western democracy.

That is why, fundamentally, “PAS for all” is a chimera. - FMT

Terence Netto is a senior journalist and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.