Ten or twenty years ago, one could never envisage PAS to even think about cooperating with Non-Muslim parties let alone taking in non-Muslim memberships and neither would a non-Muslim person contemplate on joining the Islamic party. This year, the 54-year old party, which is now a part of a multiracial Pakatan Rakyat coalition, has finally made the unprecedented move to open full party membership to non-Muslim nationals by setting a five-year timeline to do so and has asserted that it will not compromise on its core Islamic principle.

The statement was issued early this year, a month after PAS central committee endorsed the constitutional draft which upgraded PAS Supporters Club to become a Supporters Congress of Assembly. Formed in 2004, PAS Supporters Club has more than 20,000 members, comprising Chinese, Indians, Siamese and Ibans. With the upgrading of this non-Muslim party wing, the new congress will have leadership structures at national, state and division levels, but no voting power in the party or access to contest for main party posts.

Testing Water in ‘98 General Elections

The progressive new model that broke PAS’ tradition of fielding only Muslims as candidates came about as it realised that communal politics is outdated and the crucial role minorities play in increasing vote counts. The last General Election saw them fielding non-Muslim candidates, the first being Kumutha Raman who contested for Ulu Tiram state seat in Johor (though she was fielded under PKR symbol, based on an electoral pact between the two parties) though lost to BN’s Maulizan Bujang.

When asked about her decision to join and contest for PAS, the then 29-year law graduate said “I know I won’t feel alienated because I believe voters nowadays are open-minded.” Kumutha also said that she joined the PAS Supporters Club because “PAS is not bent on racism”.

The New Moderate Progressive PAS?

Such progressive move is without doubt obligatory in making PAS more relevant to multiracial Malaysia and gaining that precious non-Malay/Muslim votes but its repositioning from conservative (by the likes of Hasan Ali, Nasharuddin Mat Isa and Mustafa Ali) to moderate progressive (Khalid Samad, Husam Musa, Hatta Ramli and Dzulkefly Ahmad) inevitably puts its integrity at stake. The party also needs to deal with the public’s impression that it is being too accommodating to DAP and PKR and its over-willingness to forgo its long-established Islamist principles to please its coalition counterparts.

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PAS MP of Shah Alam Khalid Samad.

Spiritual leader Dato’ Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat has been showing his  liberal side of late in the sanctioning the party’s new multiracial, multi-religious resolution and his stand on the ‘Allah’ usage issue. People tend to forget that under that headdress and jubbah is a seasoned politician who‘s reached cult status in his home state. The reality is, the next General Election presents as the best chance for the opposition to win, or at least, gain more grounds and if there was ever a time to go all out this is it.

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PAS spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat and party president Abdul Hadi Awang.

What’s most obvious though, especially after the whole in-party dispute regarding the notion of PAS-UMNO collaboration, is that in their pursuit to reach out to non-Muslim voters, the party would rather collaborate with non-Muslims than team up with UMNO/BN. History showed that their initial brief stint under BN (1973 - 1978) didn’t work out anyway.

As for whether the newly rebranded PAS is moderate progressive or conservative, I would say the present PAS may be more moderate progressive than ever before but the truth is, the real PAS is still Nik Aziz.  
 

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