Abdul Hadi Awang

Early political career

Hadi joined PAS in 1964 at the age of 17 and became a member of its central committee in 1977.^[7] Hadi contested the Marang state constituency at the 1978 general election and lost by 64 votes to Tengku Zahid Tengku Musa of Barisan Nasional. He won the Marang state seat in 1982. At the 1986 general election he lost the Marang parliamentary seat while holding his state constituency, and he won and held both seats at the 1990, 1995 and 1999 general elections.^[7][8]

Fadzil Noor died in June 2002 and Hadi took over as acting president that month.^[9] He was confirmed in the post at the party muktamar the following year, and has led PAS since 2002.^[10] He was Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2004, succeeding Fadzil Noor.^[11]

2004 general election

At the general election of 21 March 2004 the Barisan Nasional took 198 of the 219 parliamentary seats and recaptured Terengganu, ending Hadi's term as Menteri Besar. Hadi lost his own seat to an UMNO candidate, and PAS was displaced by the Democratic Action Party as the largest opposition party, though its share of the popular vote rose slightly, to 15.8 per cent from 15 per cent in 1999. Writing for the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Yang Razali Kassim attributed the outcome to Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's Islam Hadhari platform winning back Malay voters who had left the Barisan Nasional in 1999.^[12]

Consolidation of the party presidency

The PAS constitution vests final authority in the Syura Ulama Council, a seventeen-member appointed body of religious scholars headed by the party's spiritual leader, with the central committee acting as the body that implements its decisions.^[10] After the death of the spiritual leader Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat on 12 February 2015, Hadi moved the centre of power in PAS towards the presidency. Writing for the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, James Chai argues that this was done without amending the party constitution, and instead through the president's ability to move people between the central committee and the council, an ulama-led ideological realignment at every level of the party, and the lesser personal standing of the spiritual leaders who followed Nik Aziz.^[10]

Chai further argues that Hadi decided on the party's alliances with UMNO and later with Bersatu and Perikatan Nasional without the consent of the council, moved the party's public positions to the far right, restricted internal dissent, and marginalised Nik Aziz's family within the party. The faction known as the Erdogans, who favoured an inclusive approach to Islam and the admission of members without religious scholarship to the council, lost the 2015 party elections as a bloc and left to found Parti Amanah Negara.^[13][10]

Coalition alliances

The Pakatan Rakyat opposition coalition, of which PAS was a member alongside the DAP and the People's Justice Party, broke up in 2015. An RSIS commentary attributed the collapse to recrimination over hudud between PAS and the DAP, and to the crisis inside PAS that had entrenched the conservative faction and ousted its professionals wing.^[14] Hadi had sought a partnership with UMNO from 2008, a course Nik Aziz opposed. The two parties formalised the Muafakat Nasional pact on 14 September 2019. PAS joined Bersatu in Perikatan Nasional in 2020; Khairuddin Razali, a former member of the Syura Ulama Council, said the council had never discussed that alliance. Khairuddin was removed from the central committee and the council in January 2022.^[13]

Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Bill

On 6 April 2017 Hadi tabled a private member's bill to amend the Syariah Courts (Criminal Jurisdiction) Act 1965. It would have raised the maximum penalties available to syariah courts from three years' imprisonment, a fine of RM5,000 and six strokes of the cane to 30 years, RM100,000 and 100 strokes. The Speaker, Pandikar Amin Mulia, deferred debate to the following sitting, prompting protests from opposition members. The PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man called the tabling a success.^[15]

2018 general election

At the 2018 general election the PAS popular vote rose from 1.6 million in 2013 to more than two million, while its parliamentary representation fell from 21 seats to 18. The party held Kelantan, taking nine of the state's fourteen parliamentary seats and 37 of its 45 state seats, won Terengganu from the Barisan Nasional and 15 of 36 state seats in Kedah, but its presence in Selangor, Perak and Johor was substantially reduced.^[16]

2022 general election

At the 2022 general election Hadi retained Marang with 73,115 votes and a majority of 41,729.^[17] PAS contested 64 parliamentary seats and won 43, its best result and double the number it won in 1999.^[10] Barisan Nasional challenged the Marang result, but the Terengganu Election Court upheld it in June 2023 and the Federal Court affirmed that decision in November 2023.^[18] At the 2023 state elections PAS won 105 of the 127 seats it contested.^[10]

Record in office

After PAS won the state in 1999 the federal government stopped Terengganu's oil royalty, which the state had expected to be a five per cent share of annual oil and gas production worth around RM250 million, and instead paid the money out as goodwill grants through committees it appointed. The state government sued, and the case was before the High Court in 2002.^[19]

Syariah Criminal Offences (Hudud and Qisas) Enactment

On 8 July 2002 the Terengganu State Legislative Assembly passed a bill introducing hudud criminal penalties, including amputation for theft, death by stoning for adultery and sodomy, death for apostasy, and whipping for the consumption of alcohol. The bill required four male Muslim witnesses to prove a rape, and a complainant who could not meet that standard could be charged with slander. The UMNO members walked out of the chamber as the vote was taken.^[9]

Defending the bill in the assembly, Hadi said that although the penalties were "harsh and terrifying", the offences they covered were "truly evil and despicable".^[9] The federal government under Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad undertook to block the enactment, as it had the comparable law passed by Kelantan in 1993. Neither law has been enforced.^[9]

International Union of Muslim Scholars

Hadi became a vice-president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars in 2014. His tenure ended in 2018, after he was censured in 2016 for attending a conference in Iran.^[20] In 2017 Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain designated the union a terrorist organisation. Hadi attributed the listing to diplomatic disputes between states in the region and said he had not been prevented from performing the umrah.^[20]

Special envoy to the Middle East

In 2020 Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin appointed Hadi as special envoy to the Middle East, a post carrying ministerial status.^[6] On 4 February 2022, during a working visit approved by the prime minister on 28 January, Hadi met representatives of the Taliban in Doha in a meeting facilitated by the Qatari government. Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said the engagement did not amount to Malaysian recognition of the Taliban administration and was intended to help avert a humanitarian collapse in Afghanistan.^[21]

Palestine

In January 2023 the Hamas political bureau chairman Ismail Haniyeh publicly thanked Hadi for his work on the Palestinian cause, during a visit to the Hamas office in Doha by PAS and PASRelief delegations led by Hadi's eldest son, Muhammad Khalil Abdul Hadi.^[22] After the explosion at a Gaza City hospital in October 2023, Hadi blamed "Israel's Zionist regime" and said that "the world's leaders and people must rise in the spirit of jihad to defend Palestine".^[23]

Amanat Hadi

The Amanat Hadi is an address Hadi delivered in Kuala Terengganu in 1981, in which he described UMNO as an enemy that had to be opposed.^[24] An excerpt of the address circulated among PAS members in which, according to Malay Mail, he called UMNO and Barisan Nasional supporters infidels and called for a jihad against them.^[25]

On 19 November 1985 a police force of 576 attempted to arrest the PAS figure Ibrahim Mahmood at his home in Kampung Memali, Baling. Fourteen villagers and four police officers died. Mahathir Mohamad linked the Amanat Hadi to the incident. The PAS central committee member Kamaruzaman Mohamad rejected that account, attributing the deaths to the conduct of the security forces and calling for a royal commission of inquiry.^[25]

The address was declared haram in 2002. By September 2021 no record of that ruling could be found in the national fatwa database maintained by Jakim, which did not answer questions about its removal. The PAS deputy president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man said that to his knowledge there had never been any fatwa on the speech.^[24]

Remarks on Christian missionaries

Hadi has alleged that Christian missionaries brought their work to Malaysia only after failing in the West, writing that "Christianity is no longer saleable in countries where the education level is high". He said preachers backed down from debates with Muslim counterparts because "they know they would lose", and described this as "transgression in the name of religion". The article appeared in the PAS newspaper Harakah on 18 January 2016.^[26]

In December 2020 two Sabahans, Maklin Masiau and Lawrence Jomiji Kinsil, filed a suit in the High Court in Kuala Lumpur asking the court to find that Hadi had breached Section 3 of the Sedition Act through those remarks. They said they had brought the action because the public prosecutor had not charged him in the four years since publication.^[27] Hadi applied to have the summons struck out.^[28]

Remarks on non-Muslims

In an opinion piece published on 7 June 2023, Hadi wrote that non-Muslims should be grateful for the citizenship they had been granted in Malaysia and should not challenge the position of Islam or threaten Malay-Muslim leadership. He added that non-Muslims had been given posts in the Cabinet and the government in matters unconnected to religion.^[29]

Remarks about Joe Biden

On 30 January 2021 the former deputy foreign minister Marzuki Yahya criticised Hadi for saying that a new president in the White House was meaningless for the Islamic world because Joe Biden would continue Zionist-influenced policies, and that the only difference between Biden and Donald Trump was Biden's softer approach. Marzuki said the remarks could be read as an attempt to disrupt relations between Malaysia and the United States.^[30]

Health

Hadi was admitted to the National Heart Institute on 15 February 2021 and discharged four days later; his son Muhammad Khalil attributed the admission to a heavy schedule and fatigue.^[32] Hadi was admitted to hospital on 1 July 2023 for treatment.^[33] On 2 July the deputy Menteri Besar of Kelantan and PAS vice-president Mohd Amar Abdullah said Hadi had been moved out of the cardiac care unit to a regular ward after his condition improved.^[34] He underwent a further medical procedure on 17 June 2025 which was reported as successful, with visits restricted during his recovery. He was 77 at the time and had been receiving dialysis.^[35]

Honours of Malaysia

• Malaysia
  • Commander of the Order of Loyalty to the Crown of Malaysia (PSM) – Tan Sri (2021)^[37]
  • Recipient of the 17th Yang di-Pertuan Agong Installation Medal (2024)
• Terengganu
  • Knight Grand Companion of the Order of Sultan Mahmud I of Terengganu (SSMT) – Dato' Seri (2001)^[38]