In the soporific world we Malaysians live in, the unconcealed anger is focussed on the prisoner's escape, not on his police guards' gross negligence. The damage to the system is ignored. It is akin to what we see on our television screens and newspapers these days after the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks on 11 September 2001: the horror and bombast concentrated on the Muslims who perpetrated it and not on what they achieved: bringing the most powerful nation to its metaphorical knees.

Fellow Muslim, did I say? No, how could I, when Washington says the worldwide coalition to bomb Afghanistan is not an anti-Islam move. Terrorists did not have any religion, only freedom fighters have that. After all, was it not an American war hero in the US war against its Indian natives who said that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian"? So, even if Afghans are bad Muslims alive, they would be, Washington expects, good Muslims once this adventure is over.

The die is cast yet again. The Democratic Action Party (DAP), decides, the second time in a decade, it cannot co-exist with Parti Islam Malaysia (PAS). What caused it, then and now, is PAS's ambivalence to its commitment to an Islamic state. This would tie Malaysian political parties, government and opposition, in knots in elections to come, and throw into stark contrast how Muslims and non-Muslims view the promise of an Islamic state. Not just amongst Muslims and non-Muslims, but amongst Muslims themselves. The DAP's decision, superficially, breaks up the Alternative Front (BA - Barisan Alternatif). It is more. It questions how Malaysia would be governed in years to come. Whether this march into Islamic governance, in the political agenda of both UMNO, in the National Front, and PAS, in the BA, would erode the rights of the non-Muslims even more than it already is.

Muslims or narco terrorists?

But the reality is something else. Sabah UMNO is split so many ways that its chairman and former chief minister, Dato' Osu Sukam, insisted the candidate should be a Malay. The sister of a former chief minister, Datin Saidatul Said Keruak, was ready to defy party discipline to stand as an independent, until her brother, Dato' Salleh Said Keruak, dissuaded her. The superficial UMNO unity hides cracks so wide that its candidate could not possibly have won in Likas, despite 15,000 of its electorate being Malays and Muslims; only a Chinese candidate could. Another former chief minister, Tan Sri Harris Salleh, says he would back any National Front candidate but Dato' Yong.

When Shah Alam was planned as Selangor's capital, in the 1970s, the master plan had marked off places of worshipareas for non-Muslim residents. The non-Muslims accepted that they would not have as many as they would have liked, and accepted the reality of half-a-loaf is better than no bread. Shah Alam is now a reality, but the state government, still controlled, the last time I checked, by the National Front, has decided that since Shah Alam is a Malay city, there should not be places of worship for the non-Malays. Since all Malays are, by constitutional definition in Malaysia, Muslim, it in effect does not accept the existence of any religion but Islam. This is not unusual. The National Front's public posture of religious freedom is marked by an illiberality in practice. Even the non-Malay members of the coalition dare not rise up to question it.

It does not explain why. But deep down is the fear that should Muslims know of the other faiths, they might desert Islam. No one is about to rush and change faith because one read about other religions in translation. My reading about other religions makes me, I think, a better Hindu. Conversions to Islam and to some sects of Christianity in Malaysia is not in faith but in necessity: most conversions come when a non-Muslim marries a Muslim. I know but a handful who converted to Islam and the Christian or other faiths deliberately and with conviction.

But is this how Malaysians break their fast? I saw a Malay labourer, his wife and child break fast with KFC fried chicken. It was cheaper than cooking at home. Stall food is cheap but one tends to eat too much and "I cannot afford that". In Malaysia, even amongst the poor, Ramadhan is linked to food, lots of it. But non-Malay Muslims break their fast differently: they eat a sweek fruit, if dates are unavailable or unaffordable, tea and a savoury. It is much later that they sit down to a modest meal. The Indonesian stops eating about midnight and fasts for about eighteen hours, breaks it with a light meal and eats nothing until midnight. The Indian Muslim generally is abstemious about his food during the fast.

Islamic department officials double up as moral police, overlooking the constitutional guarantee of every citizen allowed to profess his or her own faith. So, they arrest girls at beauty contests, not at the beginning but, after ogling at them during it, at the end. The Trengganu religious affairs department, when the state was in UMNO hands, raided the Pantai Primula hotel a decade ago and arrested a Thai married couple, detained them in jail because they could not produce their marriage certificate. He was the Thai defence attache, he and his wife there on an official visit, were Buddhists. It caused a diplomatic incident. About 25 years ago, the Pahang religious affairs officials arrested a Singapore Hindu and his Muslim bride, allowed under the island laws, for khalwat when on their honeymoon in Cameron Highlands, causing a needless diplomatic incident. Until about a decade ago, Malaysian Muslims could marry "women of the book" -- Jews and Catholics -- without their spouses converting to Islam. The late Tan Sri Zain Azrai married a Jewish girl who retained her faith until she converted so that his promotion would not be hindered. The late Tun Mohamed Suffian's wife, Toh Puan Bunny, never converted but on her death, her body was forcibly seized by the religious officials to be buried as a Muslim in Kuala Kangsar. But the government raised the Islamic ante to displace PAS from its Islamic perch, but does it so hamfistedly that it redounds on its own sanity.

The MCA is not only against the Islamic tax of "kharaj" on non-Muslims, but accuses the DAP of ambiguity over it. The Gerakan is horrified at it. The MIC is vehemently opposed. (From the opposition, the DAP is equally against and vague about it at the same time.) But UMNO, pre-eminent in the National Front and with impeccable Islamic credentials, is strangely quite. The Prime Minister's Department unveiled a plan to ensure only proper Islamic subjects would be the subject of lectures and sermons to staunch declining support for the government. The home ministry warns PAS that its organ, "Harakah", should be sold only to its members, that they would be seized if sold to non-members. But UMNO is strangely silent on kharaj and the other perennial, "hudud". The constitutional legality of "kharaj" is in doubt but not of "hudud". Yet, the Attorney-General's Chambers has not challenged the Kelantan Government having on its books the hudud laws -- with the support of the UMNO state assemblymen. Why not? And what is UMNO's view on these two issues?

What gobbledygook does he talk about? Religious dispute? Between Muslim and Muslim? Or is he telling us that Shias are not Muslims? Could he please tell us if Iran is Muslim? Whether Chechyna is Muslim? Why is it important that Shias be targetted now? Why should the police care what the religion of the demonstrator is? Or is this the minister's way of saying that from now only Sunni Muslim demonstrators would be allowed, and all others -- Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, freethinkers -- who take part would be subject to extra harsh treatment? Has there been any Shia-Sunni Muslim violence in Malaysia that necessitates this fear? Why does the minister raise the bogey of religious violence when there is no need to? Why does he not accept that the demonstrators are a political affair, and until the minister brought it up, religion never entered into it. No Shia would go on the demonstration intent on creating a clash with Sunnis, as no Hindu Saivite would go to a Vishnuite temple intent on creating trouble..

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