KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 — Both Islamist party PAS and Malay-centric Umno are trying to “out-Islamise” each other to score votes from the Malays to remain in power, Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa said today amid the on-going row over hudud.

Explaining, the founder and director of the Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF) noted that Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) PAS is currently racing to enforce the controversial hudud law in the only state it controls, Kelantan, and has been championing the Islamic state agenda.

“Meanwhile, Umno tried to portray itself as championing the Islamic cause and seizing the role as custodian of Islam in the ‘Allah’ issue,” he said at the roundtable discussion on the Future of Religious Freedom at the Chulan Tower here.

He said that Malaysia has also become “very sectarian”, only accepting the Shafi’i school of thought under Sunni Islam as the official Islamic sect.

As a result, Muslims here are persecuted more than citizens of other faith, with followers of other schools of thought considered as “deviant”, Ahmad Farouk noted.

He said the religious authorities had also been relentless in attacking a Muslim bookstore manager over a controversial book, from arresting her in 2012 before the book was banned, until today.

After failing to convict Nik Raina Nik Abdul Aziz in the civil high court and the Court of Appeal, the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department (JAWI) once again filed for an appeal in the Shariah Appeal Court earlier this month.

“Why was it that our fore founding fathers have envisage a plural society, that we are now becoming very sectarian?” he asked.

Human rights lawyer Dipendra Harshad Rai who was also a speaker at the forum said the two largest Muslim-based parties in the country have been trying to reinvent themselves for the past two decades.

“It is difficult to reinvent yourselves when you are so used to a particular way of doing things and when you are forced by external factors to reinvent and you don’t want to reinvent, the safest thing to do is to seek refuge in religion because that helps,” he said.

Unfortunately, he added, the strategy has also created a negative perception of Islam in Malaysia.