PAS is obviously not homogenous. There are more than one school of thought in the party. The two most obvious schools are the conservatives and the “more-liberals”. I hesitate to call the latter “liberals” as many of them stop short of believing in classical liberal ideas. But they are definitely more liberal than the conservatives.
And I also hesitate to use the term “ulama group”. There are those who are not religiously educated but still hold to a conservative worldview. In reality, some of the ulama are just a subset of the conservatives, and not all ulama are conservatives.
Anyone who denies the existence of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ in PAS is, to put it bluntly, either ignorant or lying. ‘Jamaah dalam jamaah’ exists in PAS. Fullstop.
It is not just the conservatives and the more-liberals. If we take a step back we will find that there also those labelled as “ex-IRC” (Islamic Representative Council) or “ex-JIM” (Jamaah Islah Malaysia), those who came from ABIM, the Jamaat Tabligh, the Sufis and followers of individual leaders.
But the concept of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is something that the conservatives have tried to curb for so long. They say that the existence of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is wrong, un-Islamic, and dangerous for the party. Of course the arguments are peppered with religious logic. This concerted effort to curb the spread of ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ have been so successful such that, among some people in the party, being accused of participating in a ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ becomes a big hurdle for their political career progression. Just ask those who were formerly with JIM.
(Please forgive me for repeatedly using the term ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’. Here I am discussing a very specific concept in PAS such that if I were to translate it into English – i.e.: “groups within the party” – the message I am trying to convey may be lost in translation)
Conservatives’ success
Without doubt the most established ‘jamaah dalam jamaah’ is that of the conservatives. They successfully institutionalised their group within the party, forming the Majlis Syura Ulama and the Dewan Ulama. Even the Dewan Pemuda now looks more like a youthful Dewan Ulama, after conservatives won many top posts.
The conservatives jealously guard their power base. Take the recent party elections. The conservatives conducted what could have been one of the most two-faced campaigns in the history of any political party in the world.
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