By Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid* EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • While Malaysia’s 1957 Constitution establishes Islam as the state

religion, the precise implications of such a provision were never made clear. Its vagueness meant that successive political leaders were given free rein over the employment—or neglect—of Islam as a political tool. Contemporary Malaysia has witnessed vigorous drives towards multiple visions of political Islam. • Interpretations of Islam have arisen among successive generations of Malaysian Muslims in both doctrine and practice. In addition, the Islamisation of Malaysia has developed at different trajectories with the last manifestation being Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s Islam Hadhari. • Since the assumption of power by Najib Razak, the initiative of defining the Islamic framework of the nation has been effectively delegated to the official Islamic bureaucracy which has focused on Islamist uniform-ity rather than a religiously acceptable Muslim plurality. The impact of such power delegation highlights the espousal of UMNO’s socially divi-sive turn towards conservatism in the aftermath of Malaysia’s Thirteenth General Elections held this year. 2 • Fearing a massive loss of support from the vast numbers of Bumiputera Christians in Sabah and Sarawak affected by the recent Court of Appeal decision to overturn the High Court’s 2009 verdict on the use of ‘Allah’, a damage limitation exercise has been conducted affirming the limited applicability of the verdict. • For an Islamist state to materialise in the near future, given current developments, the threat would come from UMNO and its religious proxies in state institutions rather than from PAS and its allies in th