POLITICS can make people say strange things.
But there are some jokes that are better left untold, particularly when they involve someone else’s religion.
That is what makes the remarks by Sepang Umno chief Noorazli Said at the party’s annual general assembly last week difficult to dismiss as simply a bad joke.
He made a sexually suggestive joke involving a Catholic priest and a nun and attributed it to Psalm 129, although the Psalm contains no such passage.
The remarks have since drawn criticism from Umno Youth chief Datuk Dr Muhamad Akmal Saleh and former Umno minister Datuk Seri Salleh Said Keruak, among others.
The Catholic Lawyers’ Society of Kuala Lumpur has gone further, calling for Noorazli to retract the remarks and apologise, while urging the authorities to look into possible legal implications.
Noorazli’s comments are his own. They should not be taken as representing the position of the entire party.
But the timing is difficult to ignore.
Umno is in the middle of a very obvious political struggle: trying to win back Malay voters who have increasingly gravitated towards PAS.
And that struggle is getting more complicated by the day.
The party talks about Malay unity. It talks about working with PAS. Deputy president Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan has even suggested that the four SG4 states — Kelantan, Terengganu, Kedah and Perlis — could be used to test whether PAS is genuinely serious about political cooperation.
PAS, unsurprisingly, did not exactly welcome the idea.
Its election director Datuk Seri Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor effectively asked why PAS should give up ground in its own strongholds when Umno was not prepared to do the same elsewhere.
It is a fair political question.
PAS is not going to casually open the door to Umno in states where it has spent years building its base and now controls the government.
And Umno is hardly going to volunteer to surrender seats in places where it still has a fighting chance.
So much for Malay unity when the conversation moves from slogans to seat allocations.
This is where the Noorazli episode becomes more than just another controversy from a party assembly.
It raises a question about the political space Umno is trying to occupy.
If the party wants to take back Malay support from PAS, does it intend to offer voters something different — or does it believe it has to move closer to the kind of identity politics that has helped PAS consolidate its position?
There is a risk in trying to beat PAS at its own game.
PAS has spent decades building its political identity around Islam and Malay-Muslim concerns. It has a loyal base and a well-established machinery in the states it controls.
Umno does not need to become a softer version of PAS.
Nor should it need to rely on religious provocation, even indirectly, to demonstrate that it is still sufficiently Malay or sufficiently Muslim for its traditional voters.
That is why the Noorazli controversy matters.
The issue is not whether political gatherings should be humourless. They should not.
Nor is this about saying Umno leaders cannot joke.
It is about knowing where the line is.
A priest and a nun, used as characters in a sexual joke, are not simply harmless props when the joke is told at a national political gathering.
And attributing it to scripture that does not contain it makes the episode worse.
That should concern Umno, particularly when it is simultaneously trying to present itself as a party capable of bringing Malays together.
There is also a bigger political reality the party cannot escape.
Umno is part of a federal government that depends on cooperation among parties representing a politically and religiously diverse Malaysia.
It cannot campaign for Malay support as though the rest of the country does not exist.
This is the bind Umno finds itself in.
It needs to recover Malay support. But the more it competes directly with PAS on race and religion, the harder it becomes to explain what distinguishes the two parties.
And PAS is not going to make that competition any easier.
The SG4 dispute shows that even when both sides speak the language of cooperation, the old rivalry over political territory remains.
PAS wants its strongholds protected.
Umno wants space to rebuild.
Both understand that a divided Malay vote can hurt them.
But neither appears ready to make the first real sacrifice.
Perhaps that is where Umno needs to think harder about what it wants to be.
Winning back Malay voters does not necessarily mean becoming more like PAS.
It could mean reminding voters why Umno was once able to occupy the centre of Malay politics in the first place — by offering stability, pragmatism and a political vision that could accommodate the wider country.
The competition for the Malay vote is going to intensify before the next general election.
The question for Umno is whether it will respond by broadening its appeal, or by moving further into the identity politics that has already reshaped the Malay political landscape.
Because if the answer is the latter, Umno may win some of the voters it has lost.
But it may also lose sight of what it is supposed to be winning them back for. – September 14, 2026
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