The recent statements issued by the leaders of some the Barisan Alternatif (BA) component parties calling on the leadership of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) to rein in their over-zealous spokesmen and to stop "giving ammunition to the Barisan Nasional" are both timely and politically intelligent ([#1] Don't give BN bullets to discredit BA, says Syed Husin [/#], Aug 4).

They come at a time when the ruling BN coalition is using every weapon in its immensely powerful arsenal to demonise the image of PAS and Islamists in the country, labeling them as the new "fundamentalist menace" that threatens to destroy the harmony and political stability of the nation.

However, it must also be noted that the calls for PAS to moderate itself and to limit some of its own excesses falls short of the pressing political realities of the day and will most likely remain unheeded, for understandable reasons.

At the heart of the problem is the deeper socio-cultural and political malaise that is rooted in the infected Malaysian body politic itself. After nearly half a century of independence we remain a racially, culturally, linguistically and religiously fragmented and divided nation where cultural animosity and mutual fear of the Other is often dressed up in the garb of multi-culturalism.

The state's own promotion of this form of multi-cultural politics is basically a feeble attempt to disguise the fact that we are nowhere closer to creating a truly broad and all-encompassing national culture today than we were 50 years ago.

Into this divided and contested arena have stepped in both the ruling parties of the dominant BN coalition as well as the opposition parties of BA. When the BA coalition was first launched about a year ago, many hoped that it would lead to a new era where the racial, cultural and religious divides would be overcome once and for all. The problem, however, is that the component parties of BA were (and are) part of the problem themselves.

Tables turned

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, both DAP and PAS have been working hard to gain control of their own private and exclusive ethnic and religious constituencies. Neither party was really committed to winning over the support of those who remained beyond the pale of their own exclusive constituencies whose political boundaries were drawn along the lines of race or religion.

After DAP scored its big success in 1986, it hardly tried to allay the fears and doubts of the Malay-Muslim community at large. Now that the table has been turned and it is PAS that has come to the fore of the opposition coalition, we see history repeating itself with PAS dominating the opposition front.

There remains, however, one crucial difference between the politics of DAP and PAS. This lies in the obvious fact that PAS is a religious political party whose ideology is rooted in a theological discourse that conflates religion with politics.

For this reason the political and ideological frontiers envisaged by the ideologues of the party also happen to be moral and theological ones. Unlike DAP (or any other party in the country for that matter) PAS does not just recognise the difference between its members and its opponents.

The confrontation between PAS and its opponents is formulated according to a theocentric discourse which draws an absolute and irreconcilable division between the believers and the non-believers, the "good, pure and true" Muslims and the munafikin (hypocrites) and the kafir (unbelievers) as well.

This factor must be taken into account in our attempts to understand what PAS is, what it represents and what it wishes to do in the long run. It is precisely because PAS is such a religious party, driven by a theocratic and theocentric impulse, that it does what it does and promotes the causes that it chooses.

When the other members of the BA coalition call on the leaders of PAS to curb their excesses and to moderate their calls for an Islamic state and further Islamisation of Malaysian society, their appeals remain unheeded for the simple reason that they are unintelligible to the Islamists of the party.

Guided as they are by their own moral and religious convictions that what they are doing is right (indeed it can only be right, for nothing in Islam can be wrong for the Islamists), the Islamists of PAS cannot stop in their struggle to uphold Islam and to promote an Islamic way of life - albeit on their own narrow interpretation of the creed.

To expect anything else would be as silly as calling on a communist to moderate his critique of capitalism.

Realpolitik concerns

There are also some very real realpolitik considerations to be taken into account. PAS' fervent efforts to intensify the Islamisation campaign in Kelantan and Terengganu is linked to a number of profane political interests and objectives.

For a start, PAS is worried that it might lose control of Terengganu (as it did in 1961). It knows that its own record in the state will come under close scrutiny and that unlike the case of Kelantan, the people of Terengganu will still remember the days of BN/Umno rule when the next election comes.

The new PAS Mentri Besar, Uztaz Hadi Awang, also wants to show that his own hard-line approach to Islamisation works, in contrast to the approach of Nik Aziz in Kelantan and Fadzil Noor in Kedah.

PAS's new policies in the state of Terengganu may therefore seem cosmetic to some, but that misses the point altogether. What Hadi Awang is doing in Terengganu is trying to show that he means business and that he is laying the foundations for his own power base in the state in no uncertain terms.

This leads to the second important observation that needs to be made. PAS also knows that the only card it can play well is that of Islamisation. Regardless of the talk about transparency, good governance, accountability et al, it is Islam and the commitment to Islamisation of society that has always been PAS' selling point.

The party's social reform measures, which have included bans on unisex hair salons, gender segregation in shops, compulsory veiling of Muslim women, etc. are all directed towards one simple goal: to identify PAS solely and exclusively with Islam.

Related to this is the combined goal of robbing Umno of its Islamic credentials (something that is quite easy to do these days after the loss of Anwar Ibrahim from the ranks of the Umno leadership).

By pressing on regardless with its own Islamisation campaign, complete with its over-heated rhetoric and cosmetic reform measures, PAS is clearly well ahead on its way to elevating itself to the coveted position of being the only truly Islamic party in the country.

By making itself appear as the only Islamic party it also presents itself as the only viable choice to the Malay-Muslim electorate. The chain of equivalences, once set up, animates the party and gives it a life and identity of its own. PAS will not only be identified as an Islamic part: by default, PAS becomes the incarnation of Islam itself. All the other parties, be it Umno, Keadilan or PRM, will only be second grade poor imitations of the true one.

Unwavering trajectory

It is for these reasons that the appeals by the other parties of the BA will fall flat. PAS, despite the claims to the contrary, has always been a thoroughly political institution working within decidedly profane realpolitik parameters. Despite the scorn and abuse meted out to its leaders - dubbed "country folk" and "rural imams " - the leadership of PAS has shown that it is both politically astute and cognizant of the realities around it.

If PAS today shows that it is unable and unwilling to break away from its Islamist trajectory, it is for the simple reason that the party knows that this is the one path that will lead it to success. The formula works, and it can only bring them more victories in the future.

The net effect on the rest of the country, however, is less than certain. In its desperate and pathetic bid to out-Islamise PAS, Umno and the machinery of the state will invariably be sucked into the vortex of Islamisation as well.

Already we live in a society where Muslims have to come under the tutelage and policing of a complex Islamic bureaucratic network. Umno's attempt to out-Islamise PAS may well lead to an escalation of the Islamisation race, with ordinary Malay-Muslims bearing the brunt of it all and the Islamists being the ones who profit the most. We can expect more raids on public restaurants, bars, nightclubs and hotels. It may be a long time before we can go out for dinner in peace.

As for the attempt to build a multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-religious coalition in the country, we should be prepared for the worst. The fact that the leaders of DAP have not been able to contain the fears and disappointment of their own members is already a telling sign of how the BA coalition is beginning to tear itself at the seams.

These fears have been used against the BA coalition by BN and the BN-controlled mainstream media. But it must be said that the fears are also real, as are their agents. The reality is that in the world of the hard-line Islamists there is no room for compromise or negotiation: moderation does not work when one is fighting the cause of God on earth.