Anwar Ibrahim’s political journey is the stuff of legend. As an Islamist student leader, he was plucked out of his relative youth in the early 1980s to join Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s government. He rose through the ranks for a decade and a half, becoming heir apparent—only to give it up in 1998 to create a movement demanding a set of political changes known as reformasi. He endured repression, trumped-up sodomy charges, and torture during the quarter-century that followed. But power finally came back to Anwar, now 76: last November, after a divisive election, he cobbled together a unity government that made him Prime Minister.
Now, nearly a year into office, he’s grappling with the rise of the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) that is polarizing society and the continued fallout from the scandal that saw former Prime Minister Najib Razak,
