129Reviews

Piety and Politics: Islamism in Contemporary Malaysia
Joseph Chinyong Liow

New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. hbk. 282 pages

For much of the twentieth century, race and ethnicity formed the basis of 
Malaysian politics and, therefore, dominated its discourse. This book ex-
plores how over the past thirty years the politics of Malaysia, which was 
only approximately 60 percent Muslim, moved strongly in an Islamist di-
rection, indeed, “how Islam—in particular its ideological and institutional 
expressions—informs the configuration of power, the nature of legitimacy, 
and the sources of authority in Malaysian politics and society today” (xii). 
To do so, Liow first examines the genesis of the Islamist agenda from the 
perspective of the two major political parties—the Islamist opposition 
Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) and the dominant United Malay Nation-
al Organisation (UMNO)—showing how the latter went through several 
changes as it evolved to place Islamism at the center of its sociopoliti-
cal agenda. He then proceeds to show how the UMNO-led government of 



The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:2130

Malaysia began to create institutions of Islamic governance, a process he 
terms the “bureaucratization” of Islam, which formed the basis for Prime 
Minister Mahathir’s claim in the 1990s that Malaysia, constitutionally a 
secular state, was an Islamic state. As he does so, he notes the tensions that 
these developments caused between the federal and state administration on 
the one hand and civil and religious law on the other. Liow moves on to 
explore the debate from the 1990s between PAS and UMNO, and within 
PAS itself, on how Islam might be expressed as the organizing principle 
for society and politics in a religiously plural Malaysia and how the non-
Muslim communities responded to the parties’ endeavors. 

After this, Liow considers civil society organizations and how they en-
gaged with and countered the discourse of Islamism. He covers a wide range 
of organizations, from conservative to liberal, and traces their responses 
to issues such as Islamic family law, apostasy, and hudud (punishments). 
Moreover, he enterprisingly explores popular representations of Islamism 
as they are expressed in English-, Malay-, and Mandarin-language blogs, 
alternative media, and Internet chatrooms. Finally, Liow addresses Muslim 
militancy and extremism as it has emerged in Malaysia. He notes that while 
this is an important expression of Islamism, militancy and extremism do 
not have substantial support among Malaysians. He examines the measures 
undertaken by the government to deal with these issues, while reminding 
us that the future of Islamist politics lies not with the militants but with the 
vast majority of moderate Islamist groups. Liow draws his discussion to a 
close by noting that any idea of a secular state in Malaysia is dead, that the 
rivalry between PAS and UMNO (each’s piety competing with the other) 
has been an important factor in driving the process of Islamisation forward, 
but that so deeply has Islamism now penetrated Malaysia’s society that its 
views and concerns have become as important a driver of the Islamising 
process as any competition between the mainstream political parties. In 
an epilogue, considering the March 2008 elections, Liow tells us that they 
“reinforced many of the contentions made in the preceding chapters about 
the nature, state, contours, and impact of Islamism in Malaysia” (203).

This is an important book, one in which the author explores in con-
siderable detail how over the past thirty years Islamism has accomplished 
its strengthening hold over Malaysian politics and society. In addition to 
pointing to this achievement, Liow highlights three additional points of 
note. First, the paradoxes and contradictions of Islamist politics are well 
exposed—one example is how in the 1990s the PAS reintroduced in 
Terengganu the right for the Chinese community to raise pigs, while ten 



131Reviews

years later the more moderate UMNO was perceived at the federal level 
to be engaged in cleansing the country of non-Muslim places of worship 
(however, this is, a simplistic example of the nuances and complexities the 
text reveals). 

Second, although the author is not concerned with investigating the 
driving forces behind the growth of Islamism, he makes clear the role of 
external factors in helping to drive the Islamisation process. Malaysians 
are much affected by the Islamic revival; students returning from Muslim 
countries play an especial role in raising awareness. Moreover, Liow is 
quite specific in stating that “the intensification of conservative Islamist 
discourse . . . and the concurrent constriction of discursive political space” 
(149) was the outcome of a global rise in Islamic consciousness driven by
the United States’ War on Terror. Indeed—while Prime Minister Mahathir
himself was engaged in his own campaign against local Islamic militants—
in all probability, this Islamic consciousness lay behind his strident con-
demnation of the US’s extension of the War on Terror to Iraq.

Third, the author reveals how over the past decade the Malaysian 
government’s own battle against radical Islam has led the regime in an 
increasingly illiberal direction: the government increasingly only sanc-
tions “authentic Islam”; for example, the prime minister’s office identified 
twenty-four deviant strands of Islam. Shias, were apprehended as deviants 
and forced to take rehabilitation courses, and the Malaysian state began 
to monitor closely the activities of its students overseas. Aspects of free 
speech increasingly became matters of security, and the space in which this 
key democratic freedom might be exercised was confined. 

This is an essential book for all those interested in recent political de-
velopment in Malaysia and an important one for those who want to un-
derstand the progress of Islamism in the modern world. It is a pity that 
Oxford University Press permitted the solecism “an ulama” in the text (88), 
which is confirmed as policy in the glossary (246). Also, Joseph Chinyong 
Liow’s presentation would have benefited from greater clarity; it would 
have helped if the central arguments could had been more in control of the 
excellent research deployed in their support.

Francis Robinson
Professor of the History of South Asia, Department of History, 

Royal Holloway, University of London
 Sultan of Oman Fellow, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies

F.Robinson@rhul.ac.uk