An earlier version of this article was presented at the Association for Asian Studies annual meeting in New York, March 27–30, 2003. Thanks to Elizabeth Collins for organizing that panel and to Zakaria Haji Ahmad and several attendees for their useful comments. Thanks also to Byung-Kook Kim and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful criticisms and suggestions. What weaknesses remain are entirely my own fault.Google Scholar

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2. Around 60 percent of the population is Muslim; demographic projections suggest that this proportion will increase over time. Buddhists comprise around 19 percent of the population, Christians 9 percent, and Hindus 6 percent. Malays, who comprise slightly more than one-half the population, are required by the Malaysian constitution to practice Islam.Google Scholar

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53. Quoted in Malaysiakini , September 17, 2002.Google Scholar

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55. Quoted in Malaysiakini , July 2, 2002.Google Scholar

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57. Malaysiakini , December 4, 2001.Google Scholar

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68. For that election, PAS did pick a relatively moderate theme: Membangun bersama Islam (“Develop with Islam”). The party advocated governance based on Islamic values but with full protection for the civil, political, cultural, and religious rights of non-Muslims. By 1995, however, PAS had reverted to a more clearly Islamist stance, alienating most of what non-Muslim support it had managed to achieve. See Gomez, Edmund Terence, The 1995 Malaysian General Elections: A Report and Commentary (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996), p. 21.Google Scholar

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72. Quoted in Farish, “Remembering.” Burhanuddin's perspective echoes that of Indonesian president Soekarno; see, for instance, his 1926 proclamation, “Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism,” in Nationalism, Islam, and Marxism. Trans. Warouw, Karel and Weldon, Peter (Ithaca: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1970 [1926]), pp. 35–62.Google Scholar

73. For instance, PAS president Fadzil Noor was reported to have said the party would defer its plans for an Islamic state and instead focus on issues highlighted in the BA manifesto. He then refuted the first part of that report, saying articulation of a clear stance on the Islamic state issue awaited BA-level negotiations (Malaysiakini, July 12, 2001) and asserting, “an Islamic State is our objective” (quoted in New Straits Times, April 11, 1999). Prior to the elections, though, one PAS leader went so far as to insist that the idea that the party seeks to establish an Islamic state is mere “Western propaganda,” designed to discredit PAS in the eyes of more moderate Malay Muslims and non-Malays. Interview with Husam Musa, political secretary to Nik Aziz and Kelantan PAS youth chief, February 23, 1999, Bharu, Kota.Google Scholar

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75. Zainah also notes this disparity: despite PAS's supposed commitment “to reform and democratic principles … the language it speaks at the village level in its traditional constituencies, and even in the Malay pages of Harakah, is one of an intolerant and extremist Islam” (Zainah, , “Facing the Fundamentalist Challenge”).Google Scholar

76. Women's groups were especially incensed by provisions that would charge a woman who reported rape with qazaf (slanderous accusation) unless she could find four Muslim, male eyewitnesses to the crime. PAS was forced to amend that part of the bill, although the burden of proof still rests on the woman. The state government delayed enforcement of hudud law while it sent a team to study the implementation of Islamic laws in other countries.Google Scholar

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78. Proselytization among Muslims is already prohibited and hence rare.Google Scholar

79. Quoted in Mageswary, R., “Talk of ‘Islamic State’ Causes Malaysian Jitters,” Asia Times Online , November 17, 1999.Google Scholar

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83. PRM, for instance, has reiterated its opposition to the concept of an Islamic state or the imposition of beliefs by political elites, but with virtually no apparent effect on PAS's position (Malaysiakini, July 7, 2002). By contrast, Keadilan president Wan Azizah Wan Ismail stated that PAS had the right to enact hudud law in Kelantan and Terengganu, given that the party was democratically elected and no Muslim can reject sharia laws, including hudud ( Malaysiakini , August 26, 2002).Google Scholar

84. See Straits Times , September 25, 2001; Agence-France Presse, October 1, 2001.Google Scholar

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86. His deputy, Mustafa Ali, however, denies any major difference between the two men's leadership styles. Interview, August 25, 2003, Kuala Terengganu.Google Scholar

87. Quoted in Kabilan, K. and Rahman, Nash, “PAS Alone Cannot Come to Power,” Malaysiakini , September 18, 2001.Google Scholar

88. Economist , “The Greening of Malaysia.” Google Scholar

89. Netto, Anil, “Malaysia: Ready, Aim, Shoot in Foot,” Asia Times Online , July 5, 2001.Google Scholar