The Australian newspaper said the latest such instance involved the hunt for Muslims who were atheists.
Earlier this month there was a debate when the government withdrew proposed legislation to prevent a child’s conversion to Islam without the consent of both parents.
Then there was the banning of several academic books discussing moderate Islam. The report also noted the National Registration Department controversially defying a Court of Appeal ruling that granted a Muslim child born out of wedlock the right to carry his father’s surname and choosing instead to follow the non-binding advice of the Fatwa council.
The Australian report went on to give several more instances of how Islamisation has taken root in the country, including the harassing of Shia and Ahmadiya Muslims, the re-education of Muslims deemed to have deviated, and the push towards Islamic laws.
The report said the ruling government appeared to be bending over to please Islamists, including PAS which champions hudud, to win votes. It noted Umno’s uneasy friendship with political enemy PAS to win over the Malay rural constituency.
It also noted the fear among certain segments of society of the Islamisation trend.
The Australian report said 60 years of patronage politics, with Malays enjoying affirmative action policy benefits, might may be at the root of the growing religious and racial divisions feeding the climate of fear and suspicion in the nation.
The Australian quoted Dr Chandra Muzaffar, Yayasan 1Malaysia chairman, as saying he was deeply concerned at the direction in which Malaysian society was heading and at the growing power wielded by “fringe voices” from the Islamic right.
“These voices are getting louder and louder and the powers-that-be are inclined towards accomodating them. What concerns me also is Umno sort of playing footsie with PAS,” he was quoted as saying.
Chandra suggested that if Prime Minister Najib Razak was unable to keep a lid on the fallout from the 1MDB scandal or allegations he had profited from it, he could use extraordinary powers under the National Security Act to call a state of emergency.
“That’s something we should all be concerned about. I don’t think Najib, or anyone else, should be allowed to hold society to ransom because of something like this,” Chandra was quoted by The Australian as saying.
The report also quoted Oh Ei Sun, a former Najib political adviser turned analyst and senior adjunct fellow at Singapore’s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, as saying that “Umno elites are going out of their way to be religious”.
The report quoted Clive Kessler, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and a Malaysia observer for more than half a century, as saying Malaysia had seen a “progressive de-secularisation” that had intensified over the past decade.
Kessler said the push for shariah law was the culmination of a process started by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad who, in 1982, sought to outflank PAS by aligning with Anwar Ibrahim and absorbing Islamic values within the state.