Raja Petra Kamarudin's letter is a veritable tutorial in mendacity, falsehood and spin.

It is not so because of the facts he regurgitates, but because of the context he deliberately puts to it and the crucial omissions he makes which turns reality on its head.

Under Umno, thus far, Islamic laws have been applied to Muslims - in very much the way that Raja Petra describes - by the authority of the federal constitution. This gives states the right to implement Islamic laws on Muslims.

Raja Petra argues that all PAS wishes to do is to apply hudud law onto Muslims and thereby complete the application of Islamic law on them. But is this so? No it is not, because hudud - as far PAS is concerned - is not the issue (and Raja Petra is well aware of this).

What PAS wants is not simply to introduce hudud to apply to Muslims, but it wants to replace the federal constitution with the Quran/Syariah/Sunnah ('Quran') as the supreme law of the land. That is the definition of an Islamic state. This is as opposed to what Malaysia is today: a Muslim country. That is to say, a country where the majority is Muslim and large parts of the laws which apply to Muslims (and them only) is Islamic law.

What PAS wants is to make the Quran the supreme law of the land and from there work out how non-Muslims should be treated: not by reference to the federal constitution (a secular document), but by reference to the Quran (a religious document).

It is not so much that if the Quran becomes the supreme law of the land, hudud will not apply to non-Muslims, but what indeed would apply to them.

With the Quran as the supreme law, the real point is that whatever laws that apply to non-Muslims will be decided in an Islamic state, by reference to the Quran as the supreme law, and no longer by reference to the secular federal constitution that has operated for 46 years. (For example, non-Muslims have to pay kharaj [land tax for non-Muslims] instead of zakat , [alms tax])

This, is the gravamen of the charge - not whether the simple adding of hudud onto Muslims is any of a non-Muslim's business.

To top off his duplicity, Raja Petra finishes by saying that a Muslim simply needs to 'resign' from Islam in order that Islamic laws will no longer apply to him. Does he really expect us to believe that he does not know that the relevant Islamic enactment in Kelantan and Terengganu prescribing the death penalty for apostasy?