I watched PAS vice-president Mustafa Ali's interview by Tim Sebastian on Hardtalk last Friday, and immediately felt that PAS cannot be trusted to run this country. Thanks only to rampant corruption in the Barisan Nasional government, the dictatorial styles of its leaders and the grave injustice done to Anwar Ibrahim and some of the ISA detainees, PAS has managed to win control of Kelantan and Terengganu.

From the Hardtalk interview, it is clear that PAS is as hypocritical as the Barisan Nasional sometimes is, when it comes to stating its policy on Malaysia as an Islamic state and the application of Islamic laws on non-Muslims.

Mustafa said in the interview that if a person renounces Islam openly then he is "waging war on Islam" and therefore (implicitly) deserves to be severely punished under Islamic law including even the death penalty.

I cannot understand the logic of this. Why would a person have to be subject to a religious law after he has renounced the faith unless of course, he had no right to leave it in the first place. Why would anyone not be allowed to place an advertisement in the newspaper that one has chosen to leave a certain faith, whatever the faith.

When asked whether PAS condemns suicide bombings carried out by Hamas, Mustafa fumbled. It was the same when he was asked to comment on the call for "jihad".

It is PAS' right to chose the "fundamental path" if it wants to and maybe even win votes with it. What PAS should not do is to hoodwink the people of Malaysia that the current secular system involving the non-Muslims will not change after it takes control of the country.