Patterns of Religious Behaviours among Political Parties in the Malaysian Media: Analysing the News Concerning Islamic Issues

Abstract

This paper studies the interpretation of Islam by three major political parties in Malaysia namely, Barisan Nasional (BN), Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and Pakatan Harapan (PH) that competed in the previous 14th Malaysian general election (GE14) as reflected by the newspapers. Newspaper reports on matters concerning Islamic debates by the three political parties are selected. Religious interpretations are identified based on the types and levels of religious behaviours which operate as an instrument in this study and categorized as follows; i) religion as ritual, ii) religion as scripture, iii) religion as managing life challenges and iv) religion as nurturing life. The first and the second religious behaviours fall under the category of conservative, whereas the third and the fourth fall under the category of progressive. News on matters concerning Islamic debates by the selected political parties above reported by Utusan Malaysia (UM) and Malaysiakini (MK) during the GE14 are compiled for analysis. A total of 161 news articles were collected and analysed. Results indicated that the interpretation of Islam by these three political parties reflected by UM and MK is similar which is BN is seen as progressive before the GE14 and conservative after the GE14, meanwhile PAS is seen as consistently conservative and PH is consistently progressive.

Keywords:  interpretation of Islam; media; political party; religious behaviours