It is a sad day indeed that an opposition party forces me to agree with Barisan National. This is exactly what PAS' recent challenge to Pak Lah did. That is truly pathetic. Is that all the heavenly party can muster?

I am terribly disappointed. I have been an opposition supporter for all my life. But I cannot see any reason not to vote for BN if the best reason they can give is that Mrs Pak Lah doesn't wear a tudung and that Pak Lah isn't as religious as he claims.

Of course, I had not expected any more from PAS, whose ticket remains purely religious. What I do feel sorry for is the many Muslims they hoodwink as they are simply a bunch of politically ambitious people who have hijacked honest Malaysians' spiritual convictions for their own selfish purposes.

So what if our leaders are not religious? Does it say anything about how they will govern our country? No. Does it make it better if Mrs Badawi spends the rest of her life in a full-length burqa and go into purdah ? Is that perhaps even more religious than just a tudung ? Does the leader of Malaysia necessarily need to be Muslim in the first place? Or to put it another way, does a good leader necessarily have to be religious?

If you believe PAS, the answer would be yes because that is precisely their only selling point. But my question is whether the government is here to run the country or to tell us when and how to pray? To turn it around, if one is so religious then shouldn't he be spending time praying rather than dabbling in politics?

That is indeed shameful. What is scary though is that people actually do believe them. I can only think of Rumi who warned of ? false mullahs wandering around with lamp in hand, not knowing what they seek ? . Iran certainly learnt its lesson and is still smarting from it. We would be silly to ignore history and walk down the same path.