AUGUST 9 — There is something increasingly peculiar about the political discourse of Hadi-led PAS. The latter is ultra obsessed about DAP. Most Malaysian Chinese and Indians, including this author, has never even been a member of DAP nor shown any interest in it or any parties in Pakatan Harapan (PH).
Yet, to a Hadi-led PAS, whenever the question of Malay-Muslim unity is raised, DAP invariably appears.
DAP is supposedly the obstacle, according to Hadi Awang. DAP is supposedly the threat, Hadi would go on and on. DAP is ostensibly controlling the government too, Hadi insisted.
More alarmingly, DAP is supposedly preventing Malays and Muslims from coming together, Hadi has further added.
This obsession has reached the point where DAP has become almost indispensable to PAS's political narrative.
Without DAP, what exactly is preventing Malay-Muslim unity though?
That question deserves an answer. A sweeping one. Although it is tiresome since DAP does not matter as much to the Malaysian Chinese and Indians as a Hadi-led PAS has arrested time and again. If it is, DAP would enter any state or general election with total confidence that it can win over the Chinese and Indians perhaps the Malays and Orang Asli too.
As was seen in Sabah, all eight candidates of DAP in Sabah in November 2025 state election were wiped out.
DAP didn't perform all that well in Johor and Negeri Sembilan State elections on July 11 and August 1, 2025 respectively.
For the proposition that DAP is the principal obstacle to Malay-Muslim unity is both fallacious and facetious. How can a party, deemed by many Malaysian Chinese and Indians, as often sub-standard in performance, be a major force ?
It is fallacious because the argument does not correspond with Malaysia's actual distribution of political and constitutional power.
It is facetious because it reduces complicated disagreements among Malay-Muslim political parties to the supposed machinations of one predominantly non-Malay political party.
The facts tell a very different story.
Malay political disunity existed long before the DAP became an important participant in the Federal Government.
Umno and PAS fought bitterly against one another for decades. Indeed since 1951.
PKR emerged from another major rupture in Malay politics, invariably, in the form of the political altercation of Mahathir and Anwar Ibrahim in 1998.
Amanah itself emerged from a split within PAS in 2017.
Who caused these divisions? DAP?
Obviously not.
The fragmentation of Malay politics has overwhelmingly been produced by disagreements among Malay political leaders and Malay-led political parties themselves.
This is the first reality that must be confronted.
If Malay-Muslim unity is genuinely the objective, its advocates should begin by explaining why Malay-Muslim political parties repeatedly disagree among themselves.
Even as this is written Barisan National (BN) and Perikatan National (PN) of which PAS is a part of the latter cannot see eye-to-eye on the state seats they should each have. Umno in BN insists on 21, PAS in PN wants 16 out of the full state assembly of 28.
They disagree over leadership too. As happened before, during and after the state election in Negeri Sembilan. With Datuk Jalaluddin on one side backed by Wawasan and some factions in Umno while Ismail Jasim making it as the chief minister instead. PAS is delighted with these clashes since a weaker Umno makes for a stronger Hadi-led PAS.
And, perhaps most importantly, they disagree over what Malaysia itself should become.
These are substantive political differences. To forestall BN and PN's collaboration of which PAS is a key player, PAS, helped by a centrist Wawasan pioneered by Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin has papered over all their differences. How? By blaming DAP.
There is a second problem too. What does "Malay-Muslim unity" actually mean?
If it means encouraging Malays and Muslims to cooperate for the common good, there is nothing objectionable about it.
Every community should be able to strengthen itself.
But if Malay-Muslim unity means that all Malay-Muslim political parties must unite primarily against another Malaysian community or political party, then the concept has been transformed from social solidarity into political exclusion. A racist pact endorsed by BN and PN.
Of course, Malaysia cannot be built that way.
Malays constitute the majority of the country. Islam occupies its constitutionally established position.
The Malay Rulers remain fundamental components of Malaysia's constitutional order.
None of this depends upon PAS defeating DAP.
Nor can DAP simply remove these foundations.
DAP cannot change the Federal Constitution on its own. DAP cannot command the Conference of Rulers.
DAP cannot control Malaysia's Islamic institutions.
DAP does not control the civil service too.
Just as importantly, DAP does not control the police or Armed Forces.
DAP cannot even dominate the Malay-majority electoral heartland.
And DAP cannot form the Federal Government alone.
So where is this supposedly overwhelming DAP power? It is a ruse by PAS to trigger a fear of the other.
To be sure, DAP certainly possesses some political influence. But they are not structural and systemic.
It has elected representatives. It participates in government. Its ministers exercise responsibilities assigned to them.
But limited influence is not absolute control.
Representation is not domination either.
Participation in government is not ownership of the Malaysian state.
This distinction is elementary but important.
Indeed, Malaysia's political architecture makes the prospect of DAP dominating the country exceedingly remote.
Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, a federation and a parliamentary democracy. Power is dispersed among numerous institutions.
The Federal Constitution establishes limits.
The Conference of Rulers has constitutionally recognised functions.
State governments possess their respective areas of authority.
Islamic administration is deeply embedded at the state level.
Sabah and Sarawak possess their own powerful political interests.
The civil service provides administrative continuity regardless of which coalition occupies Putrajaya.
And ultimately there are elections.
Malays and Bumiputera constitute the majority of Malaysian voters.
No political party can sustainably govern Malaysia without substantial Malay and Bumiputera support.
DAP knows this perfectly well.
So does PAS.
Which raises the obvious question: why does Hadi-led PAS repeatedly need DAP as its political bogeyman ?
Because DAP performs an extraordinarily useful political function.
It provides PAS with an external adversary around which competing Malay political forces can supposedly be persuaded to unite; only that that's what PAS wants to do. Break into each and every Malay party to dominate them.
As a result, Malay political parties are divided primarily because Malay political parties disagree with one another the moment PAS is embedded into them.
Umno and PAS did not spend decades fighting because of DAP.
Bersatu did not break away from Umno because DAP ordered it to do so in mid-2016.
Amanah did not split from PAS in 2017 because DAP engineered it.
The repeated struggles over Malay political leadership have overwhelmingly involved Malay leaders competing against other Malay leaders.
Indeed, the history of PAS itself demonstrates how fluid these supposedly permanent political divisions can be.
PAS has cooperated with very different political forces at different moments in Malaysian history.
It worked with Semangat 46. It cooperated with PKR.
It worked alongside DAP during the periods of Barisan Alternatif and Pakatan Rakyat.
Today, PAS works within PN, a coalition bringing together different political interests under a common electoral platform. In the main to whitewash the extremist image of PAS which even BN cannot tolerate had it not for the marriage of convenience.
PAS has also gone through periods of cooperation and political accommodation with Umno.
This history raises a simple question.
If cooperation across ideological and political boundaries is permissible — whenever PAS believes circumstances require it — why should cooperation between other Malay-Muslim parties and DAP, such as Pakatan Harapan (PH) automatically be portrayed as a betrayal of Malay-Muslim interests ?
PAS cannot reserve political pragmatism exclusively for itself.
If working with DAP represented an existential betrayal of Malay-Muslim interests, which PAS has lambasted PH for, why did PAS itself cooperate with DAP for years in the form of Barisan Alternatif (BA) and Pakatan Rakyat before ?
History cannot simply be switched off when it becomes inconvenient for the Hadi-led PAS.
Nor can the late Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat be erased from PAS's history.
The late Nik Aziz understood something important about Malaysian politics: disagreement did not require the permanent demonisation of another community.
One could defend Islam strongly while recognising that Malaysia was a plural society.
One could disagree profoundly with DAP while still sitting at the same negotiating table.
This time around, the trajectory of Hadi-led PAS has increasingly been different.
DAP has become not merely a political opponent but a convenient explanation for almost every anxiety surrounding Malay political power.
That is dangerous.
Because once a political movement needs an enemy to maintain internal cohesion, politics stops being about solving problems and begins revolving around preserving fear. And fear is addictive.
Yet ordinary Malays are dealing with very real problems. The cost of living is real.
Artificial intelligence and technological disruption are real too.
The challenge of attracting high-quality investment is just as profound.
These are the issues that will determine whether young Malays prosper over the next generation.
How does blaming DAP solve any of them?
It doesn't.
There is another contradiction PAS must confront.
If DAP is supposedly incapable of winning broad support across the Malay heartland, how can DAP simultaneously be powerful enough to control a Malay-majority country?
Both propositions cannot comfortably coexist.
One cannot describe DAP as electorally limited among Malays on Monday and politically omnipotent on Tuesday.
At some stage, Malaysians have to ask for evidence.
What institution does DAP control?
What constitutional mechanism has it captured?
What royal institution obeys DAP?
Which Malay-majority states are controlled by DAP?
Where is this extraordinary power located?
The answers become remarkably thin.
This is why the constant invocation of DAP can begin to resemble political projection.
A movement seeking greater political dominance may find it useful to portray an opponent as already possessing precisely that dominance.
The opponent becomes larger than life.
But Malaysia does not need politics based on imaginary giants.
Nor should Malay-Muslim cooperation be built upon perpetual suspicion of fellow Malaysians.
There is nothing wrong with Malay unity and solidarity.
But unity must be for something, not merely against somebody.
Unity for better education; against corruption; for stronger families even. Especially unity for good governance.
If anything, Malay cohesion for an Islam that demonstrates justice, compassion, knowledge and confidence.
These would be powerful forms of Malay-Muslim cooperation.
But Malay-Muslim unity constructed principally around fear of DAP is intellectually hollow and strategically self-defeating.
It also underestimates Malays themselves.
Malays do not need to be frightened continuously in order to remain politically relevant.
They are the majority community.
Their language is the national language.
Islam has its constitutional position.
The Malay Rulers remain integral to the Federation.
Malay political parties occupy enormous political space.
Malay and Bumiputera participation runs throughout the institutions of the Malaysian state.
Why then should Malays be taught to behave politically as though everything could disappear tomorrow because DAP possesses several dozen elected representatives?
That is not confidence.
That is insecurity turned into political strategy.
Malaysia needs something better.
PAS is entitled to oppose DAP.
It is entitled to criticise DAP's policies.
It is entitled to defeat DAP candidates democratically wherever it can.
DAP should face precisely the same democratic scrutiny as PAS, Umno, PKR, Amanah or any other political party.
But turning DAP into the permanent explanation for the failure of Malay-Muslim political unity is neither credible nor sustainable.
And blaming DAP will not make them disappear.
If PAS genuinely wants Malay-Muslim unity, it should begin by answering the disagreements within Malay-Muslim politics rather than perpetually manufacturing an enemy outside it.
The country should now be asking a much more important question:
What are we trying to build together?
That question is harder than blaming DAP.
But it is also the only question capable of taking Malaysia forward.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and a director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
