All the goodwill currently being forged between the opposition parties will evaporate over the Islamic state issue. This is the albatross around the neck of the opposition. It cannot be wished away or swept under the carpet. Try as it might, PKR must not fudge the issue as it has the potential to cause the opposition to implode and work towards BN's advantage yet again.

PAS, in its atavistic and unintellectual approach to Islam, has demonised secularism to such an extent that living as a good Muslim and living in a a secular state is considered mutually exclusive. It does not offer any cogent or logical reasons as to why this is the case. It has explicitly said it wants the 'sharia' to be the supreme law of the land and wants 'hudud' laws to be implemented.

It does not want to give Muslims freedom of religion but instead wants to kill them if they change their faith. These are not issues which an ostensibly modern and civilised political party like PKR can conveniently ignore. It goes to the heart of what human rights, justice and equality is all about.

Malaysians supposedly live in an 'Islamic state' as declared by Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 2001. So clearly there is a great division amongst Malays as to what constitutes an 'Islamic state' . Ironically, Mahathir has described Umno as 'rotten to the core', so it stands to reason that an 'Islamic State' can have governance which is immoral.

Sudan too claims to be an 'Islamic state' but here we see the sheer monstrosity of an Islamic regime which murders, maims and rapes its own Muslim populace in the Dafur region. The plight of these people has been highlighted by the world media but Muslims just don't seem to care. This to me is the true moral state of the 'ummah' in the world.

There has to be a clear line drawn between PKR and PAS on its current exposition of what constitutes an Islamic state. Is it a fossilised, monolithic Arab-centric entity or can it be a dynamic and evolving state of governance based on modern sensibilities and modern realities?

Why is an Islamic state not compatible with secularism? If these questions and issues are not resolved then the opposition does not have a snowball's chance in hell of providing an effective challenge to BN.

It is a tragic irony that the Islamic state as promulgated by PAS divides the opposition and helps keep the 'rotten to the core' Islamic state of BN in power!