COMMENT | PAS information chief Kamaruzaman Mohamad is neither a religious nor an ignorant fool when he suggested suspending the sale of alcohol. He knows exactly what he is doing. For instance, the banning of cinemas in Kelantan to curb “social ills” has done nothing of the sort.

Former minister Zaid Ibrahim once said that the social ills in Kelantan, styled by PAS as the “Verandah of Mecca”, had been admitted by the party’s leaders when they defended the need for public caning.

Stopping social ills was never the intention and I wish people would stop propagating this narrative. The intention is imposing order on the majority Muslim population. For proponents of this kind of Islam, the suffering that happens here on Earth is merely a prelude to a better afterlife, if you adhere to dogma.

This is why Abdul Hadi Awang muses that only hell awaits if non-Muslims lead. It also why some Muslims believe (as promulgated by the likes of Zakir Naik), that cruel, even corrupt Muslim leaders, are better than honest non-Muslim leaders - “Don’t ever take the infidel West as an example, because the best of them will still end up in hell, since their kindness is without any faith to Allah and the End Times,” Hadi thundered.

The intention has always been to religious dogma as the first and last word for curbing personal and collective freedoms. This is not about finding solutions to societal problems; this is about imposing a belief system, regardless of societal issues.

Of course, this value system does not translate to the nomenklatura of PAS. Any excess if and when discovered is justified by some obscure religious passage or phrase. Living the good life. Well, even the Prophet rode the best camel.

And if you are a poor Malay Muslim and you ask why your leaders are living in luxury, well the answer is simple as Kelantan Deputy Menteri Besar Mohd Amar Abdullah (below) explained about how a governor justified living the good life during the Prophet’s time: “Therefore, he added, the governor needed to display the greatness of a Muslim leader as well.”

Now, after having imposed orders on the Muslim population, it is the turn for the non-Muslims. Never mind the economic fallout from the imposition of such a suspension (on the sale of alcohol), for the black market trade already in place. The mere mention of it is to instil fear, to demonstrate the power – governmental and social – of the religion of the state.

It is the oldest trick in the book. Spin class problems into a religious dialectic. That is the agenda of PAS.

What is the counter agenda of the supposed progressive alliance? The choice we are told is between fascist state religion and secular progressive society. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that a progressive choice is available in Malaysia. Instead, there have been red herrings for changing governments – a corrupt Umno potentate when there have always been corrupt Umno leaders – and dubious alliances with supposedly reform-minded religious-political operatives.

You cannot claim that you want Malaysians, regardless of race or religion, to be “Malaysian” first and at the same time promote the religious agenda of Muslim political cabals. These religious cabals, whether the friendly faces of Amanah, the race-based realpolitik of Bersatu or the Umno-PAS union, have one thing in common – they all claim ownership in one way or another of Islam in this country. You cannot hitch your wagon to any one of these cabals and at the same time fool your base into thinking that secular values trump religious imperatives.

Think about this for a moment. The claim that Umno uses Islam to divide the country is exactly what pro-establishment Islamists say about Pakatan Harapan. When you favour one narrative, one experience over the other, you are by definition making a stand, choosing a side and playing to the Islamic divisions in this country. It really does not matter if you think the side you have chosen is “correct” in their interpretation of Islam, especially when there is no evidence to support such a proposition.

Ever since May 9, there have been consistent moves by religious extremists, the crypto Islamists within Harapan, the Malay far right and the religious bureaucracy to undermine the secular values in this country.

There is no such thing as a “moderate” Islamisation process, despite what some moderate Muslims claim. Attempts to make such claims should rightly be viewed with suspicion by rational thinking Malaysians. Non-Muslim politicians should not take sides in Muslims divisions and if they have to align with Muslim cabals, they should make their stand clear as to their secular agendas, and their belief that all Malaysians are equal, despite what some religious trendsetters claim.

Liew Chin Tong talks about the “purists” and “mainstreamers” as if there is an ideological difference between the two. There is no ideological difference and there is no empirical evidence to support such a claim. What there is evidence of, is that the latter are willing to work with non-Muslim political parties and for a time forgo their religious rhetoric, if not agenda, while the former would rather work with like-minded partners to achieve power. And the two are not mutually exclusive.

When you fund the religious bureaucracy, when you fund religious schools and when you make statements (that a secular party should not) that the DAP (for example) supports Islamisation based on the Constitution, what you are really doing is continuing the narrative that PAS and the mainstream Malay establishment want to continue to ensure they maintain a religiously submissive majority.

Nobody is saying, certainly not me, that Harapan should ditch the religion of the state, but what I have always argued is that Harapan has no real religious narrative that could be translated to a policy which is different from the agents of the fascist state. And this is dangerous for Malaysians who believe that their public and personal spaces need to be defended.

We get all these articles demonising PAS, especially by non-Muslim political operatives, but nary an article about how reformist ideas or egalitarian ideas, which are supposed to be the basis of Islam (as many folks in Harapan tell us), would be part of the Harapan agenda.

The supposed secular and progressive alternative does not care about “moderate” Muslims. All they care about is not spooking the Malays, which is funny because the lives of young progressive Muslim politicians – and yes I am including Umno and Bersatu political operatives – have very little to do with the lives of young disenfranchised Muslims, who supposedly make up the base.

Indeed, as far as grassroots go, young PAS political operatives have more interactions with young working-class Malays in terms of religious interventions and moral policing through various federal and state propaganda organs. The irony, of course, is that this happens in Harapan controlled states. Go figure.