Malaysians are not the only ones perturbed by Tok Guru Nik Aziz Nik Mat's musings on a heavenly reward for a PAS vote. The Singapore cabbie who took my fare from the Singapore Kallang Bahru bus terminal, expressed dismay over the claim that paradise awaits PAS voters.

His agitation might have to do with the fact that he is Muslim, an ethnic Malay and previously Malaysian. That is political talk, the 30-something cabbie concluded, and really has nothing to do with Islamic teachings. But it makes Islam and Muslims look bad, he reflected, as we part company with the usual salaams.

PAS seems completely oblivious to similar sentiments locally. Close to nomination day, the learned Tok Guru's lashing out that socialists are unIslamic, brought consternation to thinking Malaysians.

PAS has to learn that it must be relevant not to its old school ulama but to the informed public if it wishes to secure a future in Malaysian politics.

Malaysia's fifth prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Pak Lah), had months before the announcement of the dissolution of Parliament, called upon the nation to stop harping on the Islamic state issue.

The 2004 Barisan Alternatif (BA) election manifesto is silent on this point. The Islamic state issue is seen as a political contestation between 'fundamentalist' PAS and 'moderate' Umno with Lim Kit Siang-led DAP persistently denouncing both in favour of the 1957 social contract.

Islamic deficit

Pak Lah's election salvo to PAS' heaven-for-votes, hudud et. al. is seemingly a new idea clothed in appropriate Arabic. In a series of rallies after nomination day, Pak Lah presented a vision of "Islam Hadhari", a "progressive and modern" Islamic governance.

Islam Hadhari, according to the premier, stresses upon development, science, religion and protects the rights of non- believers. Addressing supporters on Feb 23 in Kota Bharu, he promised that the government's Islamisation policy would not hurt non-Muslims. Any kafir , secular or cultural Muslim and the believing voters of all faiths, beliefs and persuasion would find this vision, quite reasonable.

Bearing in mind that Pak Lah has barely been in office, it is also reasonable to query how much of Islam Hadhari is a change from the Barisan Nasional's (BN) Islamisation agenda. The Islamisation programme implemented by Umno as leader of the coalition of 14 parties has been around for more than two decades prior to Pak Lah's ascension.

On March 17, Pak Lah said that "Religious appeal is very, very strong among the Malays. They are moved quite easily by religious imperatives".

Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, a professor of political science at San Diego points out in Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the Making of State Power (2001), that Umno usually suffers from an "Islamic deficit" at times of pending crisis or crisis.

In Islamic Leviathan , he works on the idea that post-colonial 'secular' states like Pakistan and Malaysia which inherited post-colonial state structures and institutions lack an indigenous ideology for state formation. They are examples where culture, in this case, Islamism, have been used by leaders to establish hegemony and growth.

The Malaysian state in 1957 was set up on the assumption that Malay nationalism is secular. Early Umno leadership had preferred to fashion itself as secular-nationalist, reflecting the ethos of the dominant elite at that time and as a necessity for maintaining comity among ethnic groups.

After the Japanese occupation, Malay nationalism included Islam, orthodox ulama and reformist Islamic leaders. From 1960 onwards, Umno became more open to Islam as the "folly of Umno's secular posture" threatened to limit its reach into Malay society. Islam is not merely an aspect of rural Malay politics and the sultan's authority but a growing aspect of urban Malay political life and the constituency in which Umno operated.

Collapse of Mahathir-Anwar alliance

Nasr identifies the serious challenges for the control of Malay politics as the pre-1951 PAS challenge (formerly Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party or PMIP), the 1969 May 13 riots and Abim in the 1970s. Nasr ends his book identifying the collapse of the Mahathir-Anwar alliance in 1998 as lessening Umno's dominance in Islamist politics to a resurgent PAS.

Observers have placed the 11th general election (with Anwar in jail), with Pak Lah's Islamic credentials thrown in every other news item about him, as an event that would turn the tide in favour of Umno. Perhaps its too early to tell, for Pak Lah has only been in office less than six months. Political savvy voters know who wins an election has also to do with who has held political and institutional power to defeat competitive politics, even with a 'resurgent PAS' or 'new politics' of the opposition.

Nasr contends that Umno, especially during the Mahathir years from 1981 to 2003 "went beyond using Islam and Islamist forces in a limited fashion to contend with a political crisis and rather viewed Islam and the need to anchor the state in indigenous cultural values as central to the state's efficient functioning and expansion of its power and capacity".

States can easily dominate their subjects physically, but to effectively rule over them, to establish hegemony over their lives "in the Gramscian sense", states must also control their subjects ideologically, that is control the cultural underpinnings of their socio-political outlook.

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is a leading Italian Marxist. Hegemony in the Gramscian sense, means the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations.

It is the 'organising principle' that is diffused by the process of socialisation into every area of daily life. When this prevailing consciousness is internalised by the population, it becomes part of what is generally called 'common sense' so that the philosophy, culture and morality of the ruling elite comes to appear as the natural order of things.

Gramsci-Khaldun

To some of us who think that as right thinking God-fearing people we should not have anything to do with Marxists and socialists, think again.

"Hegemony" and the classical and modern Arabic "haymana" have a common root in Greek "egemonia". Nazih N Ayubi ( Overstating the Arab State , 1995) says that Tunis-born Ibn Khaldun (1332- 1408, a historian and social theorist), had probably anticipated a similar concept in his notion of iltiham (coaslescence). Both Gramsci and Khaldun are concerned with social justice.

In his Muqaddima , Ibn Khaldun said that natural authority is derived from a group feeling ( asabiyyah ) acquired through the constant overwhelming of competing parties. However, the condition for the continuation of this authority is for the subservient parties to coalesce with the group that controls leadership.

The influence of Islamism-Islamic resurgence, in Malaysian politics came in the wave of May 13, 1969. Students were pivotal in that situation. The 70s witnesses an intense ideological battle between Islam, nationalism and traditional conceptions of Malay community tied to sultans and rooted in language and custom. Islam became an important distinguishing dimension of Malay identity.

The New Economic Policy and the New Education Policy introduced after May 13 provided respite for the state. It also justified expansion of its power and capacity in tightening social, economic and ethnic relations. This limited the scope of pluralism, "producing a mix of authoritarianism and democracy".

Minority communities were persuaded that expansion of state power were in their interests in order to better placate the disgruntled Malays. The latter favoured expansion of state power because it would be furthering their interests.

These post May 13 strategies temporarily neutralised formal Malay opposition. Consequently the NEP changed the face of Malaysian society. It increased the size of the Malay urban middle classes. However the NEP failed to realise its goal in 1975. In 1975 Malays owned no more than 8 percent of all capital. Malays were disenchanted and led to renewed criticisms of Umno leadership.

Abim-Umno alliance

The unevenness of NEP's social and economic impact aggravated class conflict among Malays and raised political tension. Wealthy Malay beneficiaries flaunted their wealth and their ostentatious lifestyles created resentment among rural and middle-class Malays towards the NEP. The NEP was seen to focus on wealthy Malays and it failed to alter the balance of wealth.

The NEP was designed to address ethnic imbalances, not class, sectoral or regional ones. Islam was seen to fill the gaps NEP had created but not equipped to address.

Islamism became a political and social force. Abim and al-Arqam, both rooted in student Islamic activism worked to propagate Islamic observance in public and private life. The turn to Islamism came during a decade when Islamism rose in prominence across the Muslim world. Students were exposed to these trends.

The challenge by Abim was more direct. Abim was the culmination of student political activism from 1969. While the NEP ensured a larger Malay student population at home and abroad, the government investment in education did not translate into control over their politics and activism.

Restrictions on student activity under the University and Universities Colleges Act after the 1974 Baling uprising only drove Islamist student activism under the guise of dakwah (propagation). Abim's outreach is increasingly urban, middle-class and professional.

Between 1977 and 1982, Umno and PAS competed over Abim's support. Anwar Ibrahim, who was Abim president from 1974 accepted Mahathir's offer to join Umno in 1982 believing that Abim's urban and middle-class base of support would not be comfortable with PAS' radicalism and following the lead of its ulama . In time, Abim lost its independence, power and influence and became 'establishment'.

Islam Hadhari?

Whereas PAS would envisage a powerful state narrowly rooted in Islamic law and approximating a theocracy, Anwar and Abim had a flexible view. The adherence to Islam by state leaders does not mean rebuilding the state again based on a pre-conceived Islamic blueprint but on good governance and acceptance of Islamic values. Islam provided the ideology for a better government - an Islam Hadhari by any other name?

Anwar argued that multiethnic Malaysia made coexistence and an open economy necessary. He stepped out of the rigid confines of what the Islamic state was, what sort of state would qualify as Islamic and why it should be established.

Anwar, at the threshold of joining Umno, spoke of the hypocrisy of the modern political elite, the rampant corruption and moral decadence.

But the Islamic state in Abim's formulation was in essence a concentration of power in the state and the expansion of its capacity.

Tomorrow: Part 2