Blood, Sweat and Jihad: The Radicalization of the Political Discourse of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) from 1982 Onwards

This article looks at the radicalization of the political discourse and strategies of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) from the early 1980s to the present. It argues that the radicalization of the discourse of PAS has to be understood in the context of the realities of Malaysian politics in the 1980s and 1990s, and how PAS was forced on the defensive thanks to the Malaysian state's own aggressive Islamization policy as well as variable factors from abroad such as the Iranian revolution. This article therefore examines how and why PAS made the transition from being a moderate Islamist-nationalist party in the 1960s and 1970s to the more radical and fundamentalist party that it is today. It concludes that the development of PAS then was very much part of a greater global current that was sweeping the Muslim world as a whole.