When the Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, formally opens the International Islamic University (IIU) today, he will split the campus, and the Malaysian Islamic community, yet again. For it adds to the unresolved three-year-long political fight-to-the-death between him and his nemesis, the jailed former deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim.

IIU claims Anwar, its president for 15 of its 18 years, is a digit of no consequence in its growth, and all credit must go to Mahathir. Whatever Anwar did is at Mahathir's orders, an IIU spokesperson insists, and therefore deserves no credit for what IIU is today. It is Mahathir who should get the credit. He was just, in Umno parlance, a Gurkha.

IIU's growth is hamstrung in this unresolved but relevant conflict. A collegiate of men under an inspired leader turns institutions around, not the man who ordered it set up. There is no mistaking that in IIU's development, it was Anwar who set it on firm foundations, just as his successor, Sanusi Junid, ensures its financial foundations. But without Anwar's inspired leadership, Mahathir could not declare it open today.

Since Mahathir laid the foundation of the Gombak campus in 1983, it should have been the Yang di-Pertuan Agong who should have done the honours. But it is done now to boost Mahathir's credentials as an Islamic leader. Unfortunately, it does not. Ever since his humiliation of Anwar, he cannot step into the campus except under tight escort.

Tight security

Today's event therefore is under tight security. An international guest list sweetens the occasion, but many just stayed away, including prominent donors, sending second-ranking or no representatives. The mainstream media praise Mahathir's Islamic vision, and denigrates Anwar as an Islamic nobody. Both assumptions are challenged.

But is that the issue? An Islamic institution with a growing reputation is charred by its opening conducted in such contentious arguments. It is made worse by a Prime Minister who looks more to burnishing his tarred reputation than of the institution he opens. There is nothing wrong with this. But when it is at the expense of rewriting its history, something surely is wrong.

In Malaysia, the leader of the moment denigrates his predecessors and those he wants destroyed. Go to the National Monument in Kuala Lumpur. No where in the plaque is the name of the man who had it sculpted - Malaysia's founding father, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj. That plaque was put up under the aegis of Mahathir, who at the time it was put could not forgive the Old Man for challenging his Umno Baru. Tun Abdul Razak Hussein assiduously turned the Tunku into a non-person after he took over. Who remembers Tun Hussein Onn, the immediate past prime minister?

Rewriting history

What happens to Anwar is then not new. The rewriting of history is an everyday affair in Malaysia. The feudal overview makes that inevitable. There is none so high as the one in charge, and none so low who is out. This is why men cling on to high office for as long as possible, fighting tooth and nail not to be put to pasture. What happens in Umno, MCA, MIC, Gerakan is this fear of the darkness which would consume its leaders.

When Anwar was in power, he destroyed his potential challengers as assiduously as Mahathir destroys his now. But should Mahathir have been as petty when he opens IIU today? Should he not have been more magnanimous? Why did IIU not accept Anwar's role in its growth, and insist that what Anwar did was at Mahathir's bidding for which he should not be remembered by?

But IIU's arguments reek of megalomania. If Mahathir should take credit for IIU, then he should also take blame for all that is wrong. He must accept blame or credit for what happened to Anwar. He and he alone takes credit and blame for all that happened as prime minister.

This goes against the grain. The need to seek others to blame is so ingrained in Malaysian culture, that one accepts it as routine. His cabinet ministers quickly shift blame for what goes wrong and are quick to take credit for what they do right. And so the Prime Minister. He, for instance, takes credit for appointing his deputy prime ministers, but not for destroying them.

But what was Anwar's role in the development of IIU? When Mahathir became Prime Minister in July 1981, he weaned Anwar, then a leading Islamic intellectual, into Umno to boost his Islamic credentials to confront PAS' growing theocratic power. One of Anwar's first tasks was to raise the Islamic College, founded in 1955 by the British, to a university; another was Islamic banking.

Institution breaking

Mahathir knew at the time that without Anwar it could not have been as well received as it was. Anwar's Islamic credentials were unquestionable; he was in the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, head of Abim, ran a well-regarded tutorial institution on Islamic principles. Anwar became president in 1983 and held it until after he was dismissed. It was widely accepted during that 15 years that it was Anwar's baby, and how well he managed it enhanced both his, and Mahathir's, reputation.

When he fell in 1998, he retained that support within the Muslim world, one Mahathir tries to this day to destroy. Two Malaysian ambassadors to the Middle East have that as their main preoccupation. But the more Anwar is sidelined, the more he looms large. When credit is deliberately denied, and by official fiat, as now, it is Mahathir's stature, not Anwar's, that is diminished.

Malaysia was once a society of institutions, in which they were more important than who worked in them. Under Mahathir, they were systematically broken down, and credit given to the leader. The Leader was all important. That worked so long as there was not a Leon Trotsky or a MarshallLin Piao or a Nelson Mandela or an Anwar Ibrahim to contend. Stalin and Mao Zedong survived because they destroyed their challengers. Mandela succeeded, but Anwar is not yet defeated.

The IIU opening is therefore a much ado about nothing. It had a dual role - to enhance Mahathir's Islamic credentials, and denigrate the man who helped him achieve it. That is where everything fell out of place. It was important that in the formal opening, Anwar was forgotten. But it is his shadow that is the unseen and most important guest today. That should worry Mahathir no end.

Nothing has changed.