Why Hadi is the face of Malaysia’s future Part 3: Can Anwar save Malaysia?Dennis Ignatius - 15 Jun 2023https://tinyurl.com/484d7u3rMany – especially non-Muslims – are now looking to Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to stem the advance of political Islam and preserve Malaysia as a secular multicultural democracy. I suspect that they are going to be very disappointed.Anwar rose to national prominence as an Islamist. Along with Hadi Awang, he cut his teeth in ABIM, the Muslim youth movement, of which he was a founding member as well as its second president. Anwar was subsequently recruited by Dr Mahathir Mohamad to shore up UMNO’s Islamic credentials as a counterweight to PAS. With Dr Mahathir’s full support, Anwar set about to Islamise the government along with the education sector. His policies directly contributed to the rapid rise of political Islam in Malaysia.Since coming to power, Anwar has attempted to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares; playing up his commitment to secular multiculturalism while deepening his ties with Islamists. He has organized several large Islamic events to burnish his Islamic credentials. He has also sought to win over the Islamic bureaucracy with a range of financial incentives and support for initiatives like RUU355. As well, Anwar seems intent on expanding the role and powers of JAKIM (Department of Islamic Development) in the affairs of government. In May, it was announced that the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) would collaborate with JAKIM to censor material deemed offensive or deviant.[1]His latest move – inviting JAKIM to play a bigger role in policy-making, drafting the national budget and national development plans and reforming national and governmental institutions[2] – is the most ominous sign thus far of where he is headed. It will entrench the mullahs at the heart of government and put them in a position to influence the entire machinery of government and the policies that ensue from it. It might well lead to a burgeoning of the Islamic bureaucracy, perhaps even the creation of a parallel religious civil service.This is actually what PAS has been pushing for. In 2020, PAS Dewan Ulama chief Nik Zawawi called for Syariah advisers – political commissars really – to be embedded in every government agency “to ensure that Islam’s position as the national religion was upheld when carrying out policies”.[3]Anwar’s actions have effectively redefined the Federal Constitution by giving religious authorities like JAKIM powers that the framers of the constitution never intended. Many including Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah[4] and G25[5] have argued that JAKIM itself is an unconstitutional body but that has not stopped it from becoming the behemoth that it is today.It is the most significant step ever taken by a prime minister to empower the Islamic bureaucracy and should put to rest the issue of what Anwar’s priorities are. There’s a danger now that JAKIM’s influence on national policy could even eclipse that of the Malay rulers.In retrospect, one wonders whether all the talk about reformasi while he was in the wilderness and needed the support of a plurality of Malaysians was all just an elaborate public relations exercise. Tellingly, all the ‘reformasi’ stalwarts within Anwar’s multiracial party – once passionate advocates of the nation’s secular constitutional democracy – have suddenly gone silent as their president leads Malaysia further down the road to an Islamic state.In the meantime, Anwar continues to criss-cross the country preaching about respect, tolerance and inclusiveness. But it may be all just a charade, a clever move to keep non-Muslims on his side while pushing ahead with his Islamic agenda. Despite his stirring speeches on tolerance and inclusion, he has done very little by way of actual policies to advance these goals. National unity and inclusiveness, for example, cannot be sustained without a more balanced civil service; something which Anwar has already ruled out for fear of upsetting the Islamists and Malay nationalists who see the civil service as their exclusive domain. Even if Anwar genuinely wanted to rebuild Malaysia’s secular foundations, he does not appear to have the political strength, patience or the skill-set that is needed to oversee the kind of vast institutional transformation that can counter the rising tide of political Islam. Being the populist that he is, he’ll just go with the flow. Whatever it is, one thing is certain: Malaysia is quickly coming to an inflection point. Islamists have ploughed the ground well; Hadi’s version of an Islamic state will soon enough become Malaysia’s new political reality. Tengku Abdul Rahman’s “beacon of light”[6] is about to go out.