KUALA LUMPUR, 13 March 2004 — Facing an opposition led by conservative Muslims, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has sprinkled his list of candidates for forthcoming elections with religious establishment figures who promote a more gentle version of the faith.

“Abdullah is conceding that to hold authority he has to have figures of religious authority on his side,” independent political commentator Karim Raslan told Reuters, as local newspapers listed the premier’s choices yesterday.

The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) leads a multi-ethnic coalition that is sure of overall victory in the March 21 state and parliamentary elections.

But UMNO’s own showdown with Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) for the Muslim Malay vote overshadows all else — to the chagrin of the country’s large Chinese and Indian minorities.

Among those brought in to woo the Muslim vote for UMNO are the National Mosque’s imam and a youthful motivational speaker regarded as a poster woman for Malaysia’s Islamic academia.

To clean a reputation stained by graft and rebuild UMNO’s credibility, Abdullah has changed almost a third of its line-up.

Religious scholars, senior civil servants, and professionals, and even the king’s youngest brother were drafted in, but it is the Islamic element that is most significant, analysts said.

“Pak Lah sees no option but to fight fire with fire,” said Abdul Razak Baginda, a political analyst, referring to the prime minister by his nickname, a diminutive for Uncle Abdullah.

“The Malays have been transformed and religion is now at the core of their value system,” said Abdul Razak.

Non-Muslims, who make up 40 percent of Malaysia’s 25 million population, and especially the wealthier Chinese, fear their influence is dwindling given the trends.

During 22 years in power, veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad, despite personally standing for religious tolerance and modern values, allowed UMNO to be sucked in to a competition with PAS to pro?ve its Islamic credentials.

Latterly, Mahathir controversially called Malaysia an Islamic state in an attempt to steal the Islamists’ thunder, though constitutionally the country is a secular democracy, with Islam as the official religion.

Abdullah, like Mahathir who he replaced in November, believes Malaysia qualifies as an Islamic state because of its record of development and betterment of its people.

PAS openly wants to turn Malaysia into a conservative Islamic state, but there are people in UMNO who think similarly.

Lim Kit Siang, head of the Democratic Action Party, hopes a strong secular oriented opposition emerges for the sake of democracy.

“In the last five years Parliament became a battleground between PAS and UMNO over who is the real defender of the Islamic state. This is something that must be corrected,” Lim told Reuters.

More than three decades in opposition, Lim fears the 2004 election could be a watershed, with a runaway victory encouraging conservative Muslim elements in UMNO to press their agenda.

Whatever the results, others see it as just a matter of time.

“In Islam, the difference between PAS and UMNO is that PAS is running and UMNO is walking,” said Othman Hashim, an imam from northern Perlis state, who along with 2,000 fellow ulema, or religious scholars, met with Abdullah last week.