I wish to respond to the various letters criticising or ridiculing Terengganu Mentri Besar Abdul Hadi Awang's enactment of the Terengganu Syariah Criminal Bill (hudud and qisas).

Here is a man who, when criticised by 'political allies' within the Barisan Alternatif of jeopardising their electoral chances, has replied that his conscience was clean having done his duty to God, which was more important than electoral victory, investment, tourism, the attorney-general, anything or anybody.

As Hadi, PAS and its followers believe in the Almighty's authorisation of hudud (Islamic penal code) and qisas (retribution/retaliation), so there cannot be any room for negotiation and compromise.

The rest of Malaysia  the students come back as teachers to disseminate, and indoctrinate the same values from those innumerable religious schools (mazrab) that have proliferated throughout the country.

Umno's aggressive Islamisation programme of the last two decades has also helped to infuse greater religiosity among those in the civil service and the tertiary educational institutions. It has created a legion of civil servants and intellectuals who will more readily march in answer to the call of the ulama than the political masters in Umno who give them the salary pensions and scholarships. Little wonder the PM kept on lamenting on ingratitude!

In sum, Umno's policies of playing the racial card (affirmative policies) and the religious card (Islamisation) have played right into PAS' hands and served its ends by constructing the very infrastructure, and springboard from which PAS can eventually out-Islamise and displace Umno and rise to political ascendancy.

In pushing for hudud in face of rampant public opposition, Hadi, far from being a fool, is a very intelligent and, in my humble opinion, astute politician who will one day be the prime minister of this country because he knows how to tap on the underlying impulse of his constituency, exploit deftly his opponent (Umno)'s weakness and at the same time, forage on its resources. It is not for nothing that Asiaweek ranked him as more powerful than Mahathir among Asian leaders to watch, not too long ago.

The failure on Mahathir's part to draw the line against political Islamists as Kamal Ataturk did in Turkey, the failure to contain religion and promote it only within the private realm, the failure to separate religion from the public sphere and government, the failure to defend the 1957 secular constitution by proclaiming an Islamic state à la Umno's version on Sept 29 — all these, and more will contribute to the triumph of PAS over Umno over time.

It will lead to the unwinding of his own achievements and legacy, the destruction of pluralism and democracy in Malaysia, the reversal of modernity, and the establishment of a theocracy.

This (facilitation of PAS' brand of political Islam) is the single most outstanding blotch in the political resume of our beloved prime minister, as history will so judge.

He has created the conditions for development of a kind of mindset — the kind that will turn against his own party Umno, the kind that will send a virus to your computer system to break it or declare jihad against malaysiakini just because you have published articles and letters against Terengganu's hudud enactment.

This is where the greatest danger lies at this moment. It is sad to think the PM does nothing and can do nothing to counteract that which he indirectly created in order to keep the nation and his legacy harmless from this danger.