Fighting Hard-Liners on Their Own Ground

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- In an era of resurgent Islam, Zainah Anwar is a different kind of holy warrior.

She's a moderate.

An articulate, outspoken Malaysian who peppers her arguments with Koranic verses, Zainah is in a high-profile fight against the fundamentalism that has swept in from the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia over the last two decades. Today, that fundamentalism buffets her country -- a moderate Muslim nation.

"We are fighting within the rules and laws of Islam," she said in a recent interview. "We're challenging their [fundamentalist] laws on their grounds."

Unlike hard-liners in many Middle Eastern countries who have been driven underground by their regimes, Malaysia's fundamentalists pursue their agenda openly -- and so far peacefully -- through the country's main opposition party.

As such, Malaysia provides a rare glimpse into a vital struggle in the Muslim world -- that between moderates and conservatives for political supremacy and the power to shape one of the world's great religions. Few are prepared to predict the outcome, in part because events elsewhere in the Muslim world threaten to shift the balance.

The country's religious moderates -- often accused of being aligned too closely with the West -- fear that a U.S.-led attack on Iraq would almost certainly bring new strength to the fundamentalists and erode their own support.

In an especially pessimistic assessment, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad expressed concern in a recent interview in the Financial Times newspaper that a U.S.-led attack on Saddam Hussein would not only generate more recruits to the extremist cause but could also spark a global wave of communal violence.

It wouldn't be the first time that unexpected events both at home and far away have whipsawed the momentum in the battle for dominance. The 1999 imprisonment of popular former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, following a trial widely viewed by his supporters as a Mahathir vendetta, triggered large-scale defections by moderates, with voters repelled by what they saw as a vindictive, unjust kind of rule.

The fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, known by its Malay acronym, PAS, quickly converted its advantage into strong election gains later that year. The party's image as a largely honest movement drew additional support as Mahathir's United Malays National Organization battled accusations of corruption and crony capitalism.