One of the biggest and longest-running controversies that PAS has gotten itself into is the question of Shariah law and its stated aim of implementing hudud punishments should it ever come to power in the country.

This controversy goes back to the 1990s, when PAS first tabled the Kelantan hudud bill after it came to power in the state and elected Nik Aziz Nik Mat as menteri besar.

PAS has never been short of supporters for its hudud bill. It has also not been short of opponents, many of whom criticised the bill and the party that proposed it on a number of grounds.

PAS' political opponents labelled the bill a political gimmick, while women's groups attacked it on the grounds that it was discriminatory towards Muslim women in particular.

The hudud bill was also one of the main causes of the internal divisions within the beleaguered Barisan Alternatif, and ultimately became the reason why DAP chose to break away from the tenuous instrumental coalition.

The tabling of the PAS hudud bill, first in Kelantan and then in Trengganu, has therefore incurred a considerable political cost to PAS.

Though PAS' opponents have lamented the party's inability and reluctance to compromise on the hudud issue, it should be noted that the Malaysian case is far from unique.

Other Islamist movements and parties have tried to force their way when implementing their own versions of the Shariah, with varying degrees of success. In Pakistan, Islamist parties like the Jama'at-e Islami, Jamiat'ul Ulema-i Islam and Jamiat'ul Ulema-i Pakistan managed to move the state apparatus closer towards the Shariah by simply shifting the discursive centre of Pakistani politics closer towards the Islamic register.

In other countries like Nigeria and Sudan, the introduction of Shariah law led to heightened conflicts within the Muslim community itself, as well as inter-religious conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims.

One of the best tools

To expect PAS to surrender the hudud gauntlet would be naive to say the least. As we have seen, PAS, as a political party schooled in the mores and norms of political contestation, knows that the hudud issue is one of the best tools it has at its disposal.

Operating with the full knowledge that the Umno-led government has never and probably will never compromise on this highly sensitive and emotionally-loaded issue, PAS has been able to use hudud as one of its most effective weapons to weaken the resolve and tarnish the Islamist credentials of the government.

The beauty and utility of PAS' hudud bill (at least up to 2002 before Abdul Hadi Awang rose to become its president) was that it would never come to pass. (PAS' leaders probably suspect rightly that the federal government will never allow any PAS state government to actually implement any of the hudud punishments, which ironically saves PAS from the embarrassment of having to actually chop off hands and feet, whip and stone people to death in public.) <> From a political scientist's point of view, the hudud issue has to be one of the most effective discursive and ideological tools that PAS has had in its formidable arsenal.

Due to the pivotal status that Shariah occupies in the economy of Islamic theological-legal discourse, it has been elevated to the status of the 'holy grail' of many an Islamist movement. Many Islamist parties today locate and identify themselves according to their commitment to the implementation of Shariah law. (The question of whether their respective experiments with Shariah actually live up to the ideals and principles of justice and equity that is so important to Islam invariably lags further behind.)

In the midst of the controversies that have overtaken many Muslim societies today, the question of how and why Shariah has become so popular has been completely overlooked. Lest we forget, Shariah is not a new development in Islam its formulation dates back to the beginnings of Muslim civilisation itself and it was developed during the golden age of Islamic civilisation to the level of a sophisticated science.

It should also be noted that for centuries Shariah was not seen as a crucial element that would somehow fill the psycho-social void within the Muslim ummah (community) The Ottoman dynasty, for instance, managed to thrive and prosper for seven centuries with a clear and neat division between religion and state at its core.

The offices of the Vazir (prime minister) and Sheikh'ul Islam (head of the religious community) were both under the control of successive Ottoman Sultans who kept their feet in both worlds.

Likewise in Moghul India, Islam served as the mainframe upon which the Moghul empire was constructed, but this was also a Muslim dynasty that compartmentalised itself into distinct secular and religious spheres. Shariah was never an issue in these cases.

The demand for Shariah should therefore be located in the moment when Muslim societies began to experience their political, economic and cultural decline. It was during the late 19th century that the demands for religious revival and Muslim solidarity were first heard in the Muslim world.

Remedy to social ills

It was the Muslim modernists and reformers who first brought Shariah back to the centre stage of Muslim politics, seeing it as the remedy to the social ills of Muslim society and presenting it as the framework for the new Islamist project they proposed for the future. (While the traditionalist Muslims were quite happy to live with the division between religion and state that was introduced by the Western colonial powers, as it suited their own interests perfectly well.)

The Muslim modernists and reformers saw in the Shariah a ready-made discursive economy that could be effectively utilised to create organic linkages with the Muslim polity, which would in turn pave the way towards political mobilisation and the creation of modern political movements.

Many of those who turned to the Shariah as a vehicle for political organisation found that their efforts did not go unrewarded in time a host of Islamist parties and movements all over the world emerged, many of them openly committed to a return to the Shariah and the reconstruction of the Islamic state.

The other factor that has contributed to the growing demand for Shariah is the failure of many post-colonial Muslim states, a factor that has often been bracketed out of the discussion by Shariah's opponents.

For what is often forgotten is the fact that for millions of ordinary Muslims the world over Shariah not only has the stamp of legitimacy on it, it also happens to be a legal system that has had a direct and relevant impact on their lives.

In many of the predominantly Muslim colonies of the West, the division between civil and religious law meant the creation of local Shariah and/or customary courts where justice was delivered immediately. Muslim peasants and workers from Morocco to Indonesia did not have to travel all the way to the colonial capital to have justice delivered to them: the local Shariah court sponsored and regulated by the colonial state apparatus was always on hand to deliver judgements on the day itself.

The fact that ordinary Muslims did not have to engage lawyers (and thus incur heavy costs); that they knew the verdict even before the judgement was pronounced and that the system seemed consistent, open and reliable meant that Shariah courts enjoyed a degree of legitimacy in the eyes of many Muslims.

In the post-colonial period practically every newly independent Muslim state embarked on extensive and impressive development initiatives. The modernising programmes of Ayub Khan of Pakistan, Soekarno of Indonesia and Nasser of Egypt were expected to deliver the bounties that independence had promised the people. The same was the case of Malaysia, from the time of Tunku Abdul Rahman onwards.

But the failure of so many modernising programmes, coupled with the creeping culture of corruption, nepotism, abuse of power and authoritarianism in so many Muslim states pointed to the failure of secularising elites and their ideologies. As their hopes and dreams were dashed on the hard rocks of realpolitik, Muslims began to look for other alternatives and the Islamists were there to provide them with one the Shariah and the Islamic state.

Corporate and politicial scandals

To understand the appeal of PAS' hudud proposals today, one would therefore have to look at the corresponding failure of its counterpart, the civil legal system. PAS has always called for the creation of an Islamic state and the introduction of Shariah law in the country. (Though the party's own understanding of what such an Islamic state would look like has changed over the years, from the time of Dr. Burhanuddin al-Helmy to Asri Muda to Yusof Rawa and the present generation of Ulama leaders.)

But for the first four decades of its history, PAS made little gains as far as the Shariah issue itself was concerned. It was only from the 1990s onwards that PAS has made Shariah its main weapon against the Umno-led government, and with some success.

That this shift took place at a time when Malaysians were exposed to a string of major corporate and political scandals could not be a simple coincidence: as the scandals grew in scale as well as number, the public's faith in the civil legal system was tested and pushed to the limit as more and more corporate misdemeanours were brushed under the carpet or kept under wraps.

The Constitutional crisis of 1982-3, the Umno legal battle of 1987, the Constitutional crisis of 1991-93, the financial crisis of 1997 and the 'Anwar Ibrahim' crisis of 1998 all contributed to the steady erosion of public confidence in not only the ruling coalition, but also the institutions of state such as the police, legislature and judiciary.

Faced with such stark realities it is hardly a surprise if so many among the younger generation of Malay-Muslims today have given up with the secular developmental model. Though this does not pretend to be an exhaustive analysis, one can tentatively conclude that one of the main reasons why Shariah Law and hudud have become so popular among many Malay-Muslims is the failure of the secular option. The solution to the 'problem' (if it merits being described as such) is to restore the integrity and credibility of the civil legal apparatus itself.

Rather than demonising PAS' Shariah project and engaging in an endless debate about the religious credentials of 'PAS' hudud' or 'Umno's hudud', it would be simpler to reform the civil legal system in the country so that it once again does what it is meant to do: mete out justice in an open, fair and consistent manner according to the fundamental principles of the Malaysian constitution.