Introduction

Over the past few years, many politicians, activists, preachers, academicians, influencers, “opinion leaders” and cyber troopers in Malaysia have been active in drumming up Muslim insecurity and the narrative of “Islam under threat”. Such a threat arguably comes from non-Muslims, liberal Muslims, the LGBT community, migrant workers and as anything perceived as “un-Islamic”. Sometimes, labels such as penjajah (colonizers), pendatang (outsiders), kafir (infidels) and musuh Islam (enemies of Islam) have been used to describe these threats as well.

Such right-wing activists have used various social media platforms to manufacture perceptions and mobilize sentiments. Even though sometimes the factual basis of their argument is questionable, the narratives of “Islam under threat” and “Malay being sidelined” are widely circulated online and even reported and debated in mainstream media.

Such sentiments partly contributed to the solid electoral gains of Perikatan Nasional (PN) in recent elections, thanks to its positioning as a coalition that can “unify and defend Malay Muslims”. These gains were often attributed to the “green wave”, which is often equated with some kind of Islamization. However, as we understand it, it is more the culmination of a right-wing majoritarian moment composed of Malay nationalist and Islamist forces.

This article argues that efforts to understand the green wave must not overlook the social media dimension.

The Right-Wing Playbook

It is impossible for the researcher to get an “objective” view of why voters vote a certain way, as those are complex decision-making processes. In our observation, however, the green wave needs not just to be about voting patterns, but rather politics as experienced by Malaysian voters through social media.

It was reported that 74% of Malaysians get their news from social media, which is even higher than Indonesia, India and the United States,. Such development occur in parallel with certain urbanization trends, like high smartphone ownership (96.7%); long working and commuting hours (especially for the working class and those in the rider economy) that increases social media immersion; and gated and high-rise living communities that often limits one’s exposure to political content mostly via our screens.

Hence, social media necessarily becomes the primary medium where sequestered Malaysian voters experience politics. That means they also experience the wave of hate propaganda, half-truths and downright misinformation that comes with it. There is no understanding of the green wave without an honest reckoning of these elements.

In many ways, we witness a relatively common right-wing playbook in Malaysia – political entrepreneurs claiming that the elites ignore ordinary people’s voices and that minority groups are threatening the majority’s (heterosexual, working-class Malay Muslims) rights. As in the United States, India and Brazil, these appeals have cross-cutting appeal as they wrap the anti-liberal, anti-minority and anti-establishment discourse as one, with the moral critique appealing more to conservative middle-class religiosity. Meanwhile, the elite-shunning discourse appeals to those who perceive themselves marginalized in their “own country”.

Therefore, it is useful to think of Malaysia’s green wave as more of a kind of majoritarianism: majoritarian groups urging the majority to vote and support the parties that could protect the majority. To make this political “movement” work, efforts to manufacture Malay-Muslim insecurity must first bear fruit. Such is evident in right-wing online activism in recent time.

The Jom Ziarah incident could serve as a case study, in which pro-PN influencers, conservative preachers, right-wing activists and right-wing news portals accuse the interfaith program involving Muslims visiting a church as an event with a “Christianization agenda”. What this incident reveals is a pattern of “viralling” that strings together many right-wing political entrepreneurs, who circulate similar accusations in different formats (be it short videos, posters or text messages) across various platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, online portals and WhatsApp groups. It is a kind of synergy that involves mainstream PN politicians and ostensibly “non-partisan”, albeit right-wing, social influencers. Within days, the Ministry of Youth and Sports shelved the program. Such an incident is not an isolated case; it has repeatedly happened in recent years. The government’s capitulation not only accords PN with political points, but also creates the kind of in-group/out-group rigid boundaries that are necessary to sustain the undertones of Malay-Muslim majoritarianism – that the threat is coming from the non-believers.

Most commentators focus on PN’s TikTok campaign during GE15 but we argue that such social media activism to manufacture Malay-Muslim insecurity has been ongoing since as far back as 2018, with many different right-wing actors in play.

This article will highlight two groups who often spearhead these campaigns of insecurity. The first is Ikatan Muslimin Malaysia (ISMA) and ISMA-linked social media accounts in mainstreaming right-wing discourses. The second is PN, especially Parti Islam Se-Malaysia’s (PAS) social media campaigns in the recent elections.

ISMA

ISMA, a right-wing Islamist organization known by scholars as non-violent extremists for their extreme xenophobia, is a key purveyor of these insecurity and hate-filled discourses. ISMA activists often employ a strategy of spreading fake information to stir racial and religious sentiments. For example, during the first Pakatan Harapan (PH) administration in 2019, former ISMA President Aminuddin Yahaya claimed that there was a stamp collection with photos of churches – claiming it was a “Christianisation” agenda and an attempt to “bully Islam”. In fact, this stamp collection of various worship places was released in 2016, before PH came into power. Such an incident is not an isolated case; Aminuddin Yahaya has been constantly active on his social media accounts in exposing events and individuals that he thinks pose a threat to Islam in Malaysia.

ISMA also use a variety of proxies so that their more aggressive, exclusivist campaigns can be separated from the group’s other “dakwah” activities. Gerakan Pengundi Sedar (Voter Awareness Movement – GPS) is one of the most active ISMA-linked social media accounts. During GE14, ISMA launched GPS, a campaign that urged Muslims to vote for calon Muslim berwibawa (credible Muslim candidates) who uphold the Malay-Muslim agenda. In the aftermath of GE14, GPS became an active Facebook fan page and later also a TikTok page which constantly posts so-called “un-Islamic” incidents and propagates the perception that “Islam is under threat”. It also calls for “the Malay unity” to fight against “the enemies of Islam”.

For example, amidst the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) controversy in 2018, a GPS Facebook post pointed out the dangers of ICERD ratification on Malay rights. Various individuals, groups and media outlets linked to ISMA have also actively propagated similar messages online and mobilized Malay-Muslims to join the anti-ICERD rally on 8 December 2018.

ISMA’s deep involvement is unsurprising, as Aminuddin Yahaya was the chairperson of two coalitions of NGOs that were leading the anti-ICERD protest. Whereas political parties such as PAS and the now-in-government United Malays National Organization (UMNO) lent their support to the rally, they were happy to let NGOs like ISMA be the face to make the movement look more “spontaneous” and “organic”.

GPS also constantly urges Muslims not to vote for kafir. One GPS Facebook posts criticized both PH and Barisan Nasional (BN) for fielding a non-Muslim in a Muslim-majority seat during the 2021 Melaka State Election (a criticism the page repeated often). Despite its negative connotations, the page habitually uses the term kafir to refer to non-Muslims.

This group parallels the effort of an ISMA-linked political party, Barisan Jemaah Islamiah Se-Malaysia (BERJASA), which calls for “Vote Muslim First” in its campaigns. During GE15, BERJASA is part of Gerakan Tanah Air (GTA), which upholds the idea of a Malay-Muslim-dominated political coalition by fielding zero non-Muslim candidates. This shows that being a far-right group, ISMA holds a much more exclusivist stand as compared to Bersatu, PAS and UMNO, which are still willing to work with other non-Malay parties such as the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), MIC (Malaysian Indian Congress) and Gerakan.

TV Pertiwi is another ISMA’s media outlet – it has an online portal with social media accounts on various platforms. TV Pertiwi is located in the same premise as ISMA in Bangi, while TV Pertiwi’s chairperson, Norzila Baharin is also the vice chief of ISMA’s women wing. This online portal has been constantly perpetuating perceptions that minority groups such as ethnic Chinese, liberals and LGBTs are taking over the political power in Malaysia. In August this year, its official TikTok account was removed because it repeatedly violated the platform’s community guidelines while its website was rendered inaccessible from certain providers.

Earlier in the year during the 2023 State Elections campaign, at least two TikTok short video clips produced by TV Pertiwi were widely spread across social media platforms by pro-PN activists and influencers.One of them accused the potential seat re-delineation of reducing the power of ethnic Malay and turning Malays into a minority on their land. Another one exposed the perceived drastic increase in the number of Chinese migrants and tourists, which might turn Malaysia “from a Malay land to a Chinese land”. These videos all had thousands of shares.

Such narratives are common among ISMA activists as they have focused on reports of Chinese influx and settlement, using them to warn that Malaysia could be the next Palestine or Xinjiang. In doing so, they effectively masked their Sinophobia using an imported language of settler colonialism that enjoys strong resonance locally due to local support of the Palestinian cause.

Another controversial video that was widely circulated to attack PH’s inability to “defend Islam” is an allegation that more than 200 religious schools are being closed down in Selangor. ISMA-friendly Samudera and PAS-owned Harakahdaily are amongst the online portals sharing such news, later being made into video clips circulated on TikTok by various right-wing activists, such as Izzat Johari.

PAS

In recent elections, PN, especially PAS, had used a network of party activists, influencers and preachers to spread similar messages of “Islam under threat” across various social media platforms, especially on TikTok. To be fair, PAS’ election campaign messages came in different forms and contents to target different audiences. Nevertheless, race and religion are central to their campaign. Whereas – perhaps with the exception of Ustaz Hadi Awang – PAS preachers and influencers do not always deploy fiery rhetoric, there are signs of radical rhetoric where the “enemies of Islam” discourse has intensified in their messaging. Many of these rhetoric also borrowed from ISMA’s talking points, which are usually on the far-right domain whereby non-Muslim Malaysian are often portrayed as colonial collaborators, or that there are conspiracies to “sinicize” and “secularize” Malaysia.

Like above-mentioned ISMA’s anti-kafir stands, some PAS TikTok influencers and pages urged Muslims not to vote for kafir, further popularising a term with exclusivist connotations. In a popular TikTok clip during the GE15 election campaign (with 587.1k views), the winner of Malaysia Ameerah Influencer Award (PAS’ young women wing) Puteri Syahira urged Muslims not to choose kafir as their leaders.

During the 2023 State Election campaign period, a TikTok video by SiswaPN (university student wing of PN) stated that “Apa hukum tidak mengundi? Kita tak undi, jadi menang kafir harbi lebih mudah merosakkan agama kita…” (What’s the downside of not voting? The kafir harbi [non-believers who should be fought] will destroy our religion).

As we observed in a pro-PAS WhatsApp group, there were many videos being circulated to stimulate siege mentality among Malay-Muslims that kafir, pendatang or penjajah would take over the country if the Chinese-majority Democratic Action Party (DAP) continues to be in power.

Pro-PAS preachers play an important role in mainstreaming PAS majoritarian messages. Preachers such as Ustaz Abdullah Khairy, Ustaz Azhar Idrus and Ustazah Asma Harun all have huge followings on social media, with more than 1 million followers on TikTok. They frequently give talks at various religious functions. Many also run various business enterprises, from restaurants to fashions, from pilgrimage tours to religious counselling. Such a combination of religious credentials, business networks and social media followings allows them to exercise influence among the broader Muslim public, especially those who are pious but not necessarily PAS members. Their preaching contents mainly focus on religious messages and moral advice. Nevertheless, occasionally, and especially during the election periods, they are not shy about their political inclinations – directly or indirectly urging their followers to vote for political parties and candidates who can “defend Islam”. Some preachers are widely known for being affiliated to PAS, such as Ustaz Azhar Idrus and Ustaz Ahmad Dusuki. Others downplay or conceal their connections yet subtly endorse the party, such as Ustaz Khairy Abdullah and Ustazah Asma Harun.

During the GE15 campaign period, a TikTok video entitled “Going to vote? Listen to what they say first!” went viral, with more than 400k likes and 73k shares. Although the original post is no longer available now, the video is still available on TikTok. The video featured speeches of three popular preachers – Ustaz Wadi Anuar, Ustaz Azhar Idrus and Ustaz Khairi Abdullah. In sum, they alleged that “Islam is being bullied” and there are “enemies of Islam”, thus Muslims should vote for the party that can uphold Islam.

To reach out to broader young Malay voters, some pro-PN influencers also use elements of popular cultural and fun contents to mainstream right-wing messages. One of them is DD Chronicle, who has more than 781.3k followers on TikTok. On his TikTok, he makes many parody sketches and cover songs, subtly urging Malay Muslims to vote PN. One of his viral songs, a cover of Siti Nurhaliza’s Nirmala with amended lyrics, received more than 100k likes and 22k shares. The lyrics of the song captures the scaremongering tactics, with the influencer singing “the Malays will end up being squatters (menumpang) in their own land…tuan (owners) only in name”.

In these discourses, one witnesses a negative campaign strategy, whereby calls to vote (see Hadi Awang’s exhortation that voting is mandatory and Muhammad Sanusi’s warning of Malaysia being “colonised”) are paired with existential stakes. These political entrepreneurs constantly evoke apocalyptic scenario for Islam and Muslims if PN loses the election (which did not happen, although proving a negative is almost impossible). The real concern for Malaysian democracy is that such ostensible subscription to electoral norms is part of a dark participation, whereby uncivil activities that ranges from misinformation to hate campaigns and to cyberbullying only erodes long-term trust and functioning of democratic institutions.

Conclusion

Even as the post GE-14 political landscape witnessed the fragmentation of Malay-Muslim political allegiances, we might be seeing a consolidation of a range of right-wing actors and electoral support under a broader banner of Malay-Muslim majoritarianism. The creation of this banner cannot be divorced by a strong online counter-public revolving around the theme of Malay insecurity, with viralling networks amplifying right-wing majoritarian voices and mainstreaming populist ideals and fringe theories. The campaign capitalizes on the existence of algorithmic enclaves; a critical mass of conspiracy theories circulated even by urbane, middle-class internet users and; the amplification of crisis discourses whereby a slew of right-wing political entrepreneurs (no matter their political allegiances) will keep bouncing off on the same “anti-minorities” content to create waves of discontent. With hate speech and misinformation mainstreamed at such volume, efforts aimed at preserving free speech without regulation and “fact-checking” without proactive measures seem increasingly out-of-sync with present challenges.

Introduction

The ‘Green Wave’ has been used to describe the significant electoral gains made by Perikatan Nasional (PN, The National Alliance) in Malaysia’s 15^th General Elections in November 2022 and the recent state elections in August 2023. It is an elusive term, not least due to the political motives behind its employment. In this article, we will argue that the Green Wave does not suggest a product of Islamisation per se, but, rather, the culmination of a right-wing majoritarian moment composed of Malay nationalist and Islamist forces.

Differentiating Majoritarianism and Islamisation

At this point, it is worth revisiting some of the differences between right-wing Malay Muslim majoritarianism as a political force and Islamisation as a socio-cultural process. To be sure, both are multifaceted processes intersecting in many ways. Discerning such differences helps avoid the trap of thinking that more Islamisation alone will, by default, lead to a larger ‘green wave’. We argue that there are four differences.

First, the making of this right-wing Malay Muslim majoritarianism cannot be separated from the broader right-wing turn of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). Whereas PAS had its radical phase in the 1980s, the current more exclusivist PAS is actually a turn away from its ‘Islam for all’ phase when it was with the Pakatan Rakyat (PR, People’s Alliance) coalition. A number of precipitating events led to such a shift, including the death of the influential figure of Tok Guru Nik Aziz and the exodus of the so-called ‘Erdogan’ faction that formed the party of Amanah.

Second, while signalling growing religious observance, the increasing demand for a halal economy is still a relatively inclusive process. For example, many non-Malays and non-Muslims are key pushers of the halal market. The right-wing majoritarian turn only happened in recent years with campaigns like ‘Buy Muslims First’, which has a latent exclusivist element with its non-Muslim boycotting undertones. What these right-wing actors seek is not just the moral purification of the economy but also Muslim dominance in it. This emphasis on dominance extends to political campaigns championing Muslim candidates only in Muslim-majority areas, and Muslim votes for ‘Islam-friendly’ Muslim candidates only. Such developments further challenge Malaysia’s political status quo, which is accustomed to ethnic-based parties but never to the total exclusion of minority representation.

Third, the Islamisation experienced in Malaysia does not solely follow the Arabisation route that entails significant deculturalisation from local aesthetics and customs. In recent years, self-identified champions of Islam, including PAS, have adorned traditional Malay attire more, and have made the tanjak (the traditional Malay headgear) a symbol of Malay-Muslim identity. Further boosting the popularity of the tanjak is the popular film Mat Kilau, which has a clear exclusivist message in an ethnoreligious garb (see below). Unlike what some more laudatory accounts of syncretic religion say, the integration of religion with local cultures need not always produce moderation. However, the meaning of Malay culture is always in contestation. A recent event called Keretapi Sarong has shown that its celebration can unite people from all walks of life instead of being another vessel for ethnocultural nativism.

Fourth, even as calls for pan-Muslim solidarity were often made, Malaysia’s right-wing majoritarianism has sometimes sidestepped the usual bogeyman of the Chinese-dominated Democratic Action Party (DAP, also a euphemism for anti-Chinese rhetoric), sexual minorities, and the liberals. In several instances, the disdain of PN-linked or PN-supporting right-wing actors was also directed at the Rohingyas and traders of Arab origins. This arguably shows that nativism is more pronounced than Islamism in driving right-wing mobilisation.

Our point is not that decades of conservative Islamisation has not played a role in sustaining such a political economy that makes fostering organic and tolerant multiculturalism a challenging task. But this right-wing turn in Malay nationalist and Islamist sentiments is a product of complicated origins. Factors of class, religiosity, and race are all within this potent mix.

The ‘Pull’ of the Green Wave

Within this context, the term ‘Green Wave’ is helpful for us to understand how Malay-Muslim majoritarianism operates as a socio-political force. The ‘wave’ metaphor is particularly useful because it shows how this political force, sustained by actors within and outside of PN, swept or papered over a fragmented and uneven Malay Muslim constituency. In other words, the wave has both a pulling and pooling effect. It attracts votes but also aggregates them across a spectrum of Malay voters.

The ‘pulling’ stems from the fact that the ‘Islam under threat’ discourse propagated by many right-wing actors has resonance with a variety of majoritarian insecurity sentiments. For those who experience a situation of post-Covid economic precarity, the message signals non-Muslim domination of the economy (using the ‘non-Muslim’ signifier helps sidestep the near-half non-Malaysian equity ownership that is often wrongly attributed to the Malaysian Chinese). Right-wing activists also smartly tapped into the economic insecurity among Malay youth, working class and urban poor communities.

For those more prone to moral panics, the inclusion of the secular DAP and its liberal supporters in government means the risk of Malaysia becoming more liberal and secular socially. For those lamenting that a group of secular, immoral, and detached elites have dominated the upper echelons of society, the reduction of Malay-Muslim political representation following the collapse of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)-dominated government means further obstacles to the ascendancy of a new and arguably more pious Malay urban middle-class.

It is important to note that while there are material conditions that facilitate these sentiments, these insecurities are not directly reflective of a complicated reality where the Malay empowerment agenda is still ongoing and has enjoyed some success. For example, according to a paper, by 2020, Bumiputeras (the majority of whom are Malays) account for “66% of all employed Malaysians, but 68% of professionals”. A potted landscape where neither celebratory nor conspiratorial version of the Malay empowerment story is entirely accurate means there is a need for political entrepreneurs to manufacture such insecurities (especially on social media), something we will discuss in a separate article.

Green Wave as the ‘Pooling’ of Malay-Muslim Votes

Given the cacophony of interests that can potentially respond to this ‘Islam under threat’ master narrative, the true achievement of the Green Wave lies in its pooling effect: those responding to the messaging (not all have come from PN actors) deciding to vote for PN in swathes instead of choosing UMNO or simply abstaining.

This convergence is bolstered by three factors. First, PN enjoys the advantage of being a well-coordinated electoral alliance between a Malay nationalist (Bersatu) and Islamist party (conversely, UMNO, despite cosying up to PAS before the 14^th General Elections, decided to go for a three-way fight arrangement). Seat allocation, the most contentious issue for any electoral coalition gunning for the same constituency, does not appear to be an issue, despite some quarrels between Bersatu and PAS. In the elections, the coalition was also nimble enough to allow the use of the PAS logo in Kelantan and Terengganu while keeping to the PN logo in other states.

Second, PN’s effective use of culture war issues, which is euphemistically called 3R issues in Malaysia (race, religion, and royalty), has a pooling effect, too. Through advancing anti-liberal, anti-minority (especially gender and sexual minorities), anti-pluralist takes on social issues, culture war issues bridge the Islamist-nationalist divide to create a larger conservative majoritarian bloc that enables the ‘Green Wave’ to happen. The saliency of culture war issues in energising conservative majoritarian mobilisation can be seen from the fact that it not only works in places where religion is still a potent force like India and Turkey, but also in a highly secularised setting such as China.

One example of a culture war issue is the uproar against a Ministry of Youth and Sports-supported programme under the Pakatan Harapan-Barisan Nasional (PH-BN) unity government that allegedly brought Muslims to visit churches, which led to a police investigation and the Ministry ultimately abandoning the programme. PN figures have accused it of being a Christianisation agenda, a wild accusation former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin also reportedly made during the elections. But pushbacks also came from the wider public too, including influencers and populist preachers who ended up legitimising PN’s anti-multicultural stances without directly endorsing the parties.

Another cultural moment is the release of the aforementioned Mat Kilau, which emerged as the highest-grossing film in Malaysian history. Despite its problematic ethnic stereotyping and historical revisionism, the right-wing-produced film gained mass appeal as a silat action epic (a popular genre in its own right). Its jingoistic tones also fulfil an anti-colonial fantasy that began as a bourgeoisie discourse but has since trickled down to everyday political discourses. The film’s depiction of Mat Kilau as simultaneously a Malay nationalist and Islamic heroic figure is vital to this pooling effect. Unsurprisingly, the film was quickly capitalised by politicians who sought to unite the Malay votes on their end. The downside is that, like the film, the Green Wave’s call for Malay-Muslim unity is built on this divisive rhetoric on the need to confront the ‘enemies’ of Islam.

Third, the pooling effect also came from the ‘Sanusi’ effect, referring to the PAS Menteri Besar of Kedah Sanusi Md Nor, who has gained immense popularity as a straight-talking ‘man-of-the-people’ populist, much like former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Sanusi was so popular to the point that Kedah was the only state that had a higher turnout during the recent state elections; a testament to Sanusi’s mobilising capacity.

Whereas his abrasive style does not earn him universal admiration, he does exert a pooling effect, in that, like former US President Donald Trump, he manages to clinch cross-class support from the Malay-Muslim vote base. The confrontation with the elites gave him the populist credentials; but being an Islamist party leader who outlawed gambling shops in his state and demanded Penang’s return to Kedah to reverse a colonial legacy earned him lots of fans amongst the Malay middle-classes too, given a substantial part of this demography yearns for a more ‘Islamic’ government and an abject removal of any traces of (secular) colonialism. Indeed, PN was so convinced of Sanusi’s popularity amongst the Malay ground that they appointed him the national election director (with many calling him panglima perang, war general) for the state elections. He was also featured heavily in early campaigns in the more urbanised Selangor (see this video that was watched 150,000 times), until he became a liability for allegedly insulting the Sultan of Selangor.

The Future of the ‘Green Wave’?

Understanding its pulling and pooling effects helps us locate the ‘Green Wave’ in a particular historical moment in Malaysia’s changing political scene. The pull factors speak to a situation of high economic, cultural, and political uncertainties; a situation that is not without global parallels. On a sociological level, what helps channel these anxieties in the direction of ethnoreligious majoritarianism is a confluence of multiple factors. Malaysian society is more connected and exposed than ever thanks to social media; more ‘Islamised’ than ever due to decades of Islamisation; and freer than ever to go against the elites and the establishment due to the opening of the democratic space (which also means non-majoritarian opinions can easily be drowned or bullied out of existence in the name of majority rule). The pool factor reflects a potential reconsolidation of the Malay votes following the gradual decline and potential “death” of UMNO since 2008, a countereffect of the West Malaysian non-Malay votes concentrating in PH. The longevity of this wave, to our minds, depends on the interplay between these pull and pool factors. The former relates to the structural, institutional, and even regulatory conditions that sustain right-wing discourses in its toxic identitarian terms; the latter hinges on PN’s continued internal coherence and electoral prowess.

A Series on Political Islam and GE15 – Part 5: Mediatised Religion in Malaysia: Islamization by Trolling?

Introduction 

The mixture of religion and politics is a staple in Malaysian politics. Islam is of particular interest to many due to its symbolic, social and institutional role as the religion of the majority in a relatively pious and conservative society. 

An often-cited reason for Islam’s increased saliency in Malaysian politics is the “Islamization race” between the two major Malay parties in Malaysia, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (Pan-Malaysian Islamist Party – PAS). The reasoning is that, as both UMNO and PAS competed to posture themselves as the true “defender” of Islam, they left behind legal, discursive and institutional legacies that entrenched Islam’s prominence in Malaysian social and political life. 

The competition normalized Islam as a vernacular of Malay political competition and, as a result of such normalization, more actors sympathetic to Islamism were incorporated into state-building projects that made any effort to seclude the political sphere from religion extremely difficult.

However, the dynamics behind this “Islamization race” is not unchanging. To start, the increased competitiveness in Malaysian politics that began in Reformasi (which really intensified after the watershed 12^th General Election [GE12] in 2008 and more so after Barisan Nasional‘s [United Front – BN] defeat in 2018) means it is no longer the UMNO-PAS dyad that determines the course and contours of Islamization. 

This is because Islamist actors, as do Malay support, have diffused amongst the many parties and social organizations. Another factor is that the medium upon which discourses and contestations about Islam played out in Malaysia have moved to the online space. 

In this article, the focus is on social media, particularly a phenomenon referred to as “Islamization by trolling” that intensified in the past couple of years. 

The Trolling: From Subculture to Mainstream

The translocation of politics (or religion) onto social media is not, as some tech people defensively put it, the mere migration of the status quo (or human nature) onto the cyberspace. The medium where social interactions transpired has always been able to exert a disproportionate influence on their forms and practices. 

That is why scholars have come up with the concept of mediatization, referring to how the media (be it TV, radio, or social media) transforms “communication forms and relations between the people on the micro level”, as well as the “nets of sense and meaning making on the macro level”. Put differently, the medium defines, determines and arguably distorts the message. 

The concept of mediatized religion, therefore, involves understanding religion as narrated, transmitted, visualised, beautified and practised through the algorithms, filters, communities, and connections offered by social media. Indeed, scholars of mediatized religion have indicated that the media have become the primary locus where information, issues and experiences about religion are moulded. Many would say the same for politics as well. Hence, this inter-crossing between social media, religion and politics has to be treated seriously instead of been relegated to an epiphenomenon.

The mediatization of religion and politics also means that both are exposed to some of the more insidious practices in the cyberspace. Trolling is one of them, defined here as “the act of leaving an insulting message on the internet” to deliberately annoy, bait, or provoke the emotional reaction of someone. 

Islamization by trolling happens in Malaysia when a party gets exposed, mocked and ridiculed by messages that question its’ “Islamic-ness” on social media and, as a consequence, concedes to that pressure by either backing-down from a less conservative and more tolerant position, or recommitting itself to a higher ideal of creating an Islamic state that has always been a polarizing issue in Malaysia’s multifaith and multicultural society.

The Context: Competition and Revenge

This potent mixture of politicized Islam and trolling is informed by two contexts. The first is that troll culture has pervaded Malaysian politics, as it has elsewhere. According to communications scholar Jason Hannan, “trolling is now an open practice, in which many trolls no longer bother hiding behind fake names and fake pictures, feeling evermore confident to make abusive comments against people they know and do not know alike.” 

No longer a subculture inhabited mainly by anonymous users or cybertroopers, trolling is now part of the political mainstream, where “owning” one’s opponent—not through long-form debates but through sarcastic remarks and cheap stunts—is the celebrated norm. The mainstreaming of trolling is driven by the fact that the media, the influencer economy, the security sector and politicians themselves have all joined in the action. 

This polarized environment reinforces a tribalist field where everything is fair game for those on the other side. A good example is the publicity surrounding the Super Ring stunt, where former Prime Minister Najib Razak is both the troll and the trolled. 

In its almost costless (trolling needs little money to do, nor will it be ostracized socially) and trenchantly anti-intellectual nature, trolling is conceivably the avenue of the lowest barrier for one to participate in Malaysian political life, even if what it reinforces is a kind of thoughtless tribalism that perverts the social and moral fabric of the nation. 

Troll pages in Malaysia generally enjoy a massive following, with one dedicated to trolling politicians earning up to 600,000 followers before Facebook shut it down for going against community standards. Malaysians are known to be enthusiastic participants in global trolling campaigns, with its anti-Israel “troll army” enjoying a degree of infamy. What is often left out in these stories are, regrettably, the human stories of trauma and abuse suffered by Malaysians as a result of the rampant trolling.

The second context to consider here is that “Islamization by trolling” happens at a juncture where all the major Malay-Muslim parties in Malaysia have enjoyed power at the federal level. This is a product of the electoral upheaval in 2018 that brought into power the Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope – PH) coalition (along with Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia [Malaysian United Indigenous Party – Bersatu] and Partai Amanah Negara [National Trust Party – Amanah], UMNO’s and PAS’ splinter party respectively). The Sheraton Coup in 2020 also resulted in the Malay-dominant Perikatan Nasional (National Alliance – PN) coalition headed by UMNO, PAS and Bersatu taking over. 

In this musical chairs scenario where all the Malay parties have a shot at power, accusing the other for not being “Islamic” enough makes sense because each sees marginal swings in the Malay vote as sufficient to produce an electoral upturn. 

PAS is the obvious candidate for such ridicule as it is the party that promises the most within the Islamic agenda. By setting the highest purity standards in all those years lobbying for Islamic rule, these standards have come back to bite them as they got into power. The damage is arguably self-inflicted, considering the ultraorthodox form of Islam PAS champions (at least in rhetoric) is the most contentious to implement in the more urbane and ethnically mixed parts of the West coast of the peninsula. For example, PAS’s protests against international concerts held in Kuala Lumpur strikes many as bizarre, given that it is part of the government. 

There is also a motive of revenge behind the trolling. During PH’s rule, PAS (and many others) actively condemned the government as anti-Islam, with Amanah, a relatively moderate Islamist party, most vulnerable to such critique. Thus, once PAS got into power and had to contend with the realities of governing a multicultural society, its foes in PH were more than happy to subject PAS to a taste of its own medicine. 

The party was constantly questioned about its commitment to realise the kind of hard-line Islamic rule certain PAS figures, such as its president Hadi Awang, love to expound. In this reading, the trolling is meant to expose PAS’s hypocrisy. One example of this happening is when an Amanah leader raised the issue of Malaysia having a whiskey brand named after a Malay word Timah (tin), which caught fire with another PH politician suggesting that, with that name, drinking the spirit is like “drinking a Malay woman.” 

Mocked for having a “Malay” alcohol launched during its tenure, PAS demanded the company to change the brand name, but ultimately relented as intervention from the non-Malay partners of PN successfully put the issue to rest. However, the incident highlights PAS’s unique vulnerability to such trivial challenges of its “Islamic-ness”.

It is not just PH-affiliated actors who are engaging in the trolling. As PAS emerged as a significant player on the national stage, where the expectations are higher and more sophisticated than its traditional rural constituencies in the north and the east coast, its unrealized idealism and perceived failure to meet these expectations has subjected it to considerable ridicule online. 

Terms most associated with PAS-trolling include penunggang agama (exploiters of religion), parti lebai, parti ana, and parti Isley. These wordplays that project a stereotype of PAS as a rural, Kelantanese party held by senile ulamas are meant to mock the party’s image as an out-of-touch party obsessed with a kind of unworldly piety, or its hypocrisy where the behaviour of its leaders simply does not match its vaunted ascetic piety. As far as my observation goes, these terms have seeped into Malay popular discourses, signifying how PAS’s longstanding Islamic branding does not shield it from the criticisms of a cynical, even if increasingly pious, Malay audience.

Trolling Ourselves to Ultra-Orthodoxy and a Surveillance Society

Trolling would not be an issue if they are just harmless fun. But it has significant political implications for two reasons. 

First, PAS, most vulnerable to such trolling, is no longer a marginal player in Malaysian politics. As of writing, it controls three states and held important cabinet positions prior to the dissolution of Malaysia’s parliament. After the Muhyiddin government collapsed in August 2021, PAS controlled both Minister and Deputy Minister positions in the Islamic Affairs portfolio. Thus, what PAS did in response to being trolled is incredibly consequential. 

For example, the PAS-led Kedah government has recently decided to ban all open-air concerts and festivals. This reaction came from the pressure built up by PH-supporting social media accounts trolling the Islamist party for allowing a concert in Kedah, although they would have been perfectly normal in PH-governed states like Penang or Selangor. Not only that, the PAS government in Kedah was also trolled for other issues, such as allowing a bodybuilding competition involving female contestants and a Fashion Week. 

It is important to note that the holding of these events is nothing out of the ordinary. As a BN-governed state for most of its history, Kedah has a formidable PAS presence but was never subjected to the kind of religio-moral policing found in states like Kelantan and Terengganu. Thus, banning concerts in Kedah should be considered as a kind of reactionary Islamization undertaken by PAS when it found itself defenceless against such trolling tactics. 

It is Islamization because the trolling pushes PAS towards stressing its “Islamicity”, as seen in this post where PAS claimed that it was not against concerts, just that they had to follow sharia guidelines, such as maintaining strict gender segregation and knowing “limitations”. What is left unsaid (and probably unspeakable) is the rights of the non-Muslims who must have found it unfair they had to follow religious codes that are not their own. Also, if PAS could be trolled into submission whenever it seemed to be making some progress, however minor, from its previous conservative stances, the “inclusive-moderation” hypothesis that claims that Islamists tend to moderate when they come into power for reasons of pragmatism may be undermined by the trolling.

The second implication is that trolling almost always drives Malaysian politics in a pro-orthodox, conservative position if the matter involves haram/halal considerations. Because the universe of trolling actively disincentivizes and discourages “lengthy, detailed disquisitions” in favour of “short, biting sarcasm”, it almost always forces the trolled party to err on the “safe” side just to stop the hectoring.

In Malaysia’s increasingly conservative religio-political environment, the safe option means more banning and less tolerance. While the spotlight is placed on PAS, what is really being policed by these trolls is the personal, cultural and religious rights and freedoms of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The true tragedy here is that the trolling may have come from citizens who lived outside of these PAS-governed spaces; people who can still earn a livelihood and personally enjoy those freedoms denied by PAS.

The fear of inviting abuses from the trolls also closes off the discursive space for careful deliberation. This means those directly impacted by the banning (such as the event vendors, Malay-Muslims who hold a more relaxed attitude towards these events and non-Malay, non-Muslims who saw such banning as existential to their religious and cultural rights) are shut out from the debate. The unidirectional manner trolling is leading Muslim politics in Malaysia (i.e. in a majoritarian, authoritarian and conservative trajectory) can be seen from the fact that anyone who disagrees with PAS’s bans cannot troll PAS into reversing those decisions. 

Trolling has always been about highlighting the inconsistency of PAS, not its intolerance. This means that the more trolling becomes the dominant form of discourse surrounding Islam’s position and praxis in Malaysia, the harder it is for social progressives and moderate Muslims to enter the debate and renegotiate its parameters.

Interestingly, “Islamisation by trolling” works in the opposite way of the UMNO-PAS Islamization race mentioned in the beginning. The Islamization race is about “raising the bets” as PAS and UMNO challenged each other through what they do. If PAS did Islamic policy A, UMNO would follow up with Islamic policy B. 

But “Islamization by trolling” does not require its interlocutors to actually do something. Rather, it is just about trolling your opponent for doing, or not doing, something without showing any ideological commitment of your own, nor do you have to shoulder the risk of doing or not doing the thing in question. 

For example, PH-supporting social media accounts have trolled PAS for not including the RUU 355 bill that may pave the way for hudud implementation in its manifesto. Forced to respond, PAS retorted that it did not include RUU 355 because the party was already doing all it could to expedite the bill. In other words, just as PAS was trying to settle for a less dogmatic positioning, the polarizing Hudud agenda was hauled back into the discourse. 

Yet, it makes no sense that PH should troll PAS for RUU 355 because no PH parties would touch the issue with a ten-foot pole. After all, a significant portion of their urban and non-Malay constituencies are against it. It is almost as if the Democrats in the United States are pressuring the Republicans to be tougher on banning abortion, which is virtually unthinkable because their progressive base will call them out. But in Malaysia, while there are some pushbacks from PH supporters against these kinds of trolling, they persist, nonetheless.

Looking Ahead: Will It Stop?

Whether such trend will continue really depends on why the PH-leaning crowd does it. If the motive is revenge, then they may stop after realizing moving the Overton window on issues of religious propriety will do them no good. PH is already widely seen as too liberal and secularist, so even if the hypocrisy of PAS is exposed, that does not mean the conservative Malay votes will flock to PH. Plus, disillusionment towards PAS does not necessarily entail a subsiding of the forces of Muslim majoritarianism in Malaysia. Voters may just end up choosing an even more puritan or extreme party. The choice is definitely there as Islamist actors fragment and proliferate.

Trolling will not increase PH’s appeal amongst the conservatives because it makes a case for social intolerance instead of multicultural flourishing. Some PH members have raised the radicalizing effects of such a strategy, but they seem to be in the minority. There are, of course, other reasons for the continuation of the trolling. As mentioned, trolling involves little cost and risk, so the incentives to do it and inflict harm on your opponent are always there. Furthermore, whereas its anti-corruption messaging has battered BN considerably, with PAS PH cannot seem to find an opening for attack other than the hypocrisy angle. In fact, the anti-corruption platform may have boosted PAS’ appeal. PAS leaders have campaigned that it is “cleaner” because, unlike PH and BN, its leaders have no pending court cases. 

Lastly, a most uncharitable read for the trolling activism is that some quarters within PH actually harboured hopes for a conservative “Islamic” agenda but does not want to do it themselves as part of a coalition enjoying substantial non-Muslim support. This is not unthinkable. On issues concerning sexuality rights, liberalism, non-Muslim rights to alcohol consumption and apostasy, PH-leaning Islamists from groups like the Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia – ABIM) and Pertubuhan IKRAM Malaysia (IKRAM) may hold views that are closer to the conservatives than the liberals, even as they are not vocal about it. To be sure, having disagreements within a broad-tent coalition is nothing special. But to push for a social and political agenda without even trying to convince your core constituency, namely the liberal and non-Malay voters, strikes one as being disingenuous. 

That is the peril of resorting to trolling as a kind of political activism. It does not increase accountability (because trolls often do not have to come clean of their positions) but surveillance. It subjects everyone to an impossibly high moral standard without offering the space where these standards can be renegotiated amongst different social groupings. It creates a situation where the biggest bully wins and moderation loses.

Part 1: Islamists vs Islamists in GE15

Part 2: Expected Acceptance and Rejection Factors for PAS and UMNO in Peninsula Malaysia in the 15th General Election

Part 3: The Malay-Muslim Politics and Malaysia’s GE15

Part 4: The Sustainability of the Next Islamic Initiative in Malaysia