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Islamist parties are gaining ground in Malaysia
Religious attitudes are hardening—particularly among the young
Aug 7th 2025|3 min read
Videos of public brawls are depressingly popular online. Add in a dash of religious strife and you have all the algorithmic ingredients for a viral clip. That was the case on Malaysian social media earlier this year, when the video of an elderly Malay man berating and slapping a bewildered teenager across the face drew thousands of viewers. The teen’s wrongdoing? He had supposedly erred by eating in public during the holy month of Ramadan.
For some the video was yet another warning sign that Islam in Malaysia is growing more austere. Malaysian Muslims have turned more conservative in recent decades, often influenced by stern theologies from the Middle East. A survey in 2023 by Pew, a pollster, found that 86% of Muslims in Malaysia favoured making sharia the law of the land. Two-thirds of Muslims who prayed daily said being a Muslim was “very important” for being truly Malaysian. That is souring race relations in a multi-ethnic country of 30m, where 61% of the population are Muslims, mainly ethnic Malays. The rest is made up of Malaysians of Chinese (23%) and Indian descent (7%).
Many observers are now concerned that hardening religious attitudes are shaping politics. PAS, Malaysia’s stridently Islamist party, appears buoyant. In a fractured parliament, PAS won the most seats of any single party at the last general election in 2022—despite gaining only 15% of the vote. It is the largest party in the main opposition bloc, Perikatan Nasional (PN). PAS has long held the rural states of Kelantan and Terengganu. In 2023, it picked up another by narrow margin, Kedah. It is also picking up support in urban areas. Some analysts believe that PAS has a shot at government at the next general election, in 2028. By contrast, Islamist parties in other Muslim-majority countries in the region have not fared nearly as well.
What explains this Islamist lurch? Some of this is a protest vote. Malaysians are downbeat about the economy. Many have lost faith in establishment parties, including the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which was in power in post-independence Malaysia until its ousting in 2018 over a corruption scandal, and Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, which has back-pedalled on many of its promises. Disillusioned and shorn of alternatives, young Malays are turning to PAS. Data are scarce but the best estimates suggest that around 37% of Malays aged under 30 plumped for parties in PAS’s coalition in 2022, a smidge higher than for Mr Anwar’s more socially liberal PH. According to recent polls, “upholding Islam” is the most important criterion for how young Malays vote.
Malaysian Islamists have also benefited from longer-term trends. In the 1980s, fearing competition for the Malay vote from Islamists, UMNO embarked on an “Islamisation” drive for government and society to burnish its pious credentials. PAS is now reaping the rewards. Education is one example. Malays in public schools endure hours of religious schooling each week. “When religious identity is emphasised...students believe that religion cannot be separated from anything, including politics,” argues Syaza Shukri of Malaysia’s International Islamic University.
The blending of Islamic and Malay identities has allowed PAS to “bang the drum more aggressively and obnoxiously” than Islamist parties in Indonesia, where Islam often cuts across various ethnic groups, argues Adib Azlan, the head of Invoke, a Kuala Lumpur-based political consultancy. He points out that PAS has struggled to make inroads in eastern states like Sarawak and Sabah, where the Muslim communities are more ethnically diverse.
This is turbocharged by social media. Savvy imams can rack up millions of views on YouTube or TikTok with casual sermons on relationship troubles and personal finances. But PAS also pumps out a prodigious number of political clips on TikTok, where most young Malays get their information, says Ms Shukri. The worry is that online echo-chambers will only deepen the country’s religious cleavages. As one user mused underneath the slap video: “This is only going to get worse.”
