NO. 340 - HOW DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES AMONG

Since attaining independence as the Federation of Malaya in 1957, Malaysia has experienced several Islamist waves, the most significant of which has been the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology that fuelled the Islamic resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s. [...] In the administration led by Dr Mahathir Mohamad that sought to foreground Islam as one of the planks of its governance in the 1980s and 1990s,41 Malay-Muslim Salafi conservatives carved a niche for themselves as religious experts, slowly transforming the Islamic terrain of Malay-Muslims from a religiously tolerant society to a strict and unaccommodating one. [...] For instance, one of the primary Salafi stalwarts in the UMNO hierarchy, Saudi-educated Dr Fathul Bari Mat Jahaya, has openly refuted the religious basis of the Sifat Dua Puluh (Twenty Attributes of God) precept of Ashaa’rite theology.43 A less rigid variation of Salafi-Wahhabism, such 38 The origins of Salafi thought is conventionally traced to the unorthodox teachings of the controversial theolo. [...] This is the school of thought that elements within Pakatan Harapan have lately gravitated toward, as a compromise between the passivity of the traditionalists and the rigidity of the Salafists. [...] Due most probably to the corrupt image associated with Barisan Nasional and the unreliability of Pakatan Harapan with respect to the defence of Malay privileges, the average Malay-Muslim voter now prefers to back the relatively new Perikatan Nasional–previously the second choice of many.