Commentary | Manjit Bhatia, Anwar Ibrahim’s Madani Mosque Move Caper in Malaysia
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s 27 March proclamation of “victory” regarding the construction of the so-called Madani Mosque on the site of a historic Hindu temple in the center of Kuala Lumpur is a glaring testament to his insidious political tilt towards greater Islamization and attempts to gain political legitimacy. These strands are not mutually exclusive. They are a maneuver that reeks of grubby political opportunism as he scrambles to garner support among reluctant rural Malay-Muslim voters ahead of the 2026 elections to secure another four-year term in power.
The 130-year-old Dewi Sri Pathrakaliamman temple, sanctioned in colonial law by the country’s British rulers, is a cultural and religious landmark that is about one hundred meters from Tuanku Abdul Rahman Road. That road, ironically, is named after Malaysia’s first and most likable prime minister who had declared Merdeka (freedom) from the British in 1957. Now the temple is to be unceremoniously “relocated” a short distance away to make way for a mosque. At the ground-breaking ceremony, Anwar asserted that the mosque’s development exemplifies “not sheer arrogance but our willingness to display the wisdom and strength of Islam.” This is a masterclass in Orwellian doublespeak, at which Anwar is most adept, especially when he is desperate but wants Malaysians, expressly Malays, to think he is riding the crest of edified and unassailable popularity.
Such a move has an Anwar stamp all over it. His Kajang Move of 2014 is among several examples of the lengths to which Anwar will stoop, employing hype, hubris and fiction to win support and achieve his agendas. The sultan of Selangor, Sharafuddin, roundly rebuked Anwar for his bald-faced attempt to “hijack” the political system. Had Anwar succeeded, and installed himself through the back door as chief minister of the most populous and prosperous state, he would have engineered further rapid moves to capture, by hook or crook, the prime ministership, which he had always deemed as his rite of passage.
His Madani Mosque Move to displace a minority religious site under the guise of communal harmony, however, is in and of itself an exercise in veiled ethno-religious dominance. Anwar’s bombast of inclusivity and dialogue starkly juxtaposes his actions. While he touts the relocation as “organized” and amicably “negotiated,” there was pressure exerted by his office. But the underlying message to Malaysia’s non-Muslim communities is nevertheless clear: their heritage and places of worship, among other things, are increasingly subordinate to the political whims and machinations of the dominant Malay-Muslim political class.
The Madani Mosque Move not only undermines the historically tense and generally desultory multiracial fabric of ‘Malaysian society’ or what is fancifully called “rakyat”; it also signals a precipitously dangerous xenophobic precedent where minority rights are easily trampled upon by the autocratic Malay state in the pursuit of majoritarian appeasement. Concomitantly, it makes complete nonsense of Anwar’s nation-building pretentions whilst defining his political character and leadership.
The timing of the mosque “victory” is no coincidence. With the 2026 elections hovering closer and Anwar’s premiership is on shaky ground (despite the huge foreign investment flows to Malaysia, without which Malaysian capitalism would look a little more ersatz than dynamic, more corrupt than open), Anwar is flagrantly pandering to the conservative and ultra-conservative Malay base whom he fears the most for the greater loss of his power and legitimacy. The Madani Mosque Move is the vehicle by which he is attempting to ‘transparently’ bolster his civilized Islamic credentials to win traditional Malay votes.
The move is a cynical ploy to distract from his questionable political legitimacy. After all, it was by the grace of the last king that he was installed as prime minister when Anwar lacked the numbers and confidence of a hopelessly near-hung parliament. Today, he remains deprived of substantial popular support from rural Malay constituencies in particular. These constituencies are skeptical of his self-professed liberal Malay enlightened leadership. In spite of the frequent allocations of exorbitant taxpayer-funded subsidies, Malays in general have thrown their lot behind the Islamic fundamentalist party PAS and the malicious ethno-nationalist Malay coalition, Perikatan Nasional.
This is scarcely surprising. In the 2023 elections, six states, including three Malay-dominant states, overwhelmingly rejected Anwar and his contrived Pakatan Harapan (literally, Coalition of Hope) regime, thus further enfeebling his legitimacy, credibility and trust. He lost considerable face in these elections and has not recovered from the embarrassment. To be sure, the loss heightened Anwar’s desperation to cling to power by whatever means necessary, including hawking short-term populist maneuvers.
Anwar’s desperation has not gone unnoticed on voters. One of his Unity Government partners is the Chinese-dominated, opportunistic and suddenly timid Democratic Action Party, who had spent its entire political life in opposition until briefly, from 2018-2020, after decades of calling for a Malaysian Malaysia. Most Malays, who continue to distrust the DAP and its mantra, have repeatedly rejected the party’s soundbites as self-serving (aimed primarily at disgruntled Chinese and Indian voters).
The other Pakatan partner is the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). This party fathered racism, plutocracy and corruptocracy in Malaysia. Anwar had sworn he would never bed UMNO. He did just that—twice. Apparently coopted to UMNO by the iron-fisted Mahathir Mohamad in the early 1980s, Anwar rose mercurially to become finance minister and deputy prime minister. This was before the premier conniver Mahathir brutally fired and jailed him at the height of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis that almost crushed the Malaysian economy. In 2022, Anwar forged a desperate marriage of convenience with UMNO to form ‘government’, and maneuvered to install UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as his deputy. Zahid has faced multiple corruption charges but was curiously discharged by the judiciary not amounting to acquittal.
Anwar Ibrahim is a manipulator. He learnt the dark art of racially-driven and corrupt politics from his mentor, Mahathir. A crude populist, though quite unlike the minacious Mahathir, Anwar is nevertheless willing to bend to the shifting tides of political necessity. If appeasing the gamut of rural Malays and a sizable bulk of their urban and semi-urban cousins means embracing greater Islamization—and of the notorious Saudi and Qatari Wahhabist variety—Anwar will not hesitate to move to those ends, including the slow Arabization of Muslim Malaysia.
He is not a leader driven by principles but a calculating tactician who will go to any length to maintain power and that of his patently fragile regime until at least 2030. The Madani Mosque episode, however, exposes Anwar’s precarious balancing act between his avowed commitment to democratic principles and his readiness to capitulate to hardline Islamist ideas for political gain. The emboldening of the fundamentalist Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), which has secured significant parliamentary seats, underscores the growing current of religious ultra-conservatism. Anwar is all too willing to ride the growing “green wave.” This is not the behavior of a visionary and committed reformer, even if self-proclaimed, but of a politician desperate to keep his grip on power. As a result, Anwar has, like Mahathir, sought popularity and legitimacy as a “statesman” among peer Muslim countries through his blinded strident support for the murderous terrorists Hamas and its leadership, dead or alive. In doing this he has hoped it will rub off on Malays at home and deliver him political kudos.
Critics have rightly lambasted Anwar’s Mosque Move as a short-sighted strategy that may yield immediate political dividends. But the move risks further entrenching long-term societal discord. Bulldozing his way to break ground for the mosque will not only alienate minority communities but also betray the very ideals of reform and inclusivity that he once championed. Today, cries of “reformasi” and “demokrasi” are oddly silent. Critics in Malaysia now pan his reformasi as “reformati” (dead reforms). Not surprising. What remains clear, though, is that he is willing to weaponize religion to manufacture legitimacy that he craves, positioning himself as the custodian of Islam, Malay supremacy and, by extension, overt and furtive racism, rather than be the unifier he claims to be.
Anwar’s celebration of the Madani Mosque’s construction over a displaced Hindu temple was horribly odious but predictable. It is a disconcerting manifestation of his regime’s drift towards greater Arabic-Islamization. Like his 2014 Kajang Move farce, the Madani Mosque caper is another of Anwar’s cheap political stunts. His newest cheap frolic is for students to wear the national flag badge big on their school shirts, as if this will incubate more patriotism. For Anwar, like Donald Trump, size matters. Never mind Anwar’s pompous intellectualism. The badge idea is designed to fuel more ethnic Malay jingoism and conservatism but which, in the end, may cause blowback to his insidious political ideas and maneuvers.
Anwar’s crude populisms reflect a leader more concerned with self-promotion and consolidating power through religious and Malays traditionalist posturing than upholding the pluralistic values that are essential to Malaysia’s long-term multiracial identity and political and economic stability, especially when seen against the historical backdrop of its long-suffering tetchy race relations. As the 2026 elections approach, Malaysians must critically assess whether Anwar’s disruptive tactics serve the country’s long-term if tenuous harmony and fragmented nation-building or merely the fleeting ambitions of a beleaguered politician so bereft of self-proclaimed righteousness, and so desperate to cling to power.
Manjit Bhatia is a retired lecturer in international political economy, a technologist and research director of AsiaRisk, a political and economic risk consultancy. He now indulges in journalism and essay-writing, and divides his living between the United States and Australia.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Manjit Bhatia, “Anwar Ibrahim’s Madani Mosque Move Caper in Malaysia,” criticalasianstudies.org July 2, 2025; https://doi.org/10.52698/HBWA2011.