I refer to the letter The future of PAS .

The writer’s argument lacks certain fundamental insights about the party he was writing about.

Establishing a theocratic state has never been on PAS agenda. In fact, PAS categorically rejects theocracy. This is rather evident had the writer made more efforts to get clarification from PAS leaders directly, instead of relying on third party’s assertions.

PAS commitment towards democracy and its acceptance of the multi-cultural reality of our society can never be questioned. It is PAS belief that Islam is not, in any way, contradictory to the general idea of democracy and multi-culturalism. Islam is merely a ‘product’ that PAS intends to sell within our democratic space and multi-cultural society.

PAS does not believe that democracy belongs exclusively to secularism, as secularism too, in reality, is an ‘ideological product’ that competes within the same democratic space and multi- cultural society.

In fact, the multi-cultural reality in our country has only bolstered PAS’ determination to position itself in mainstream politics to promote Islam as its ‘product’ within our democratic and plural society. Unarguably, at the end of the day, it is the people who will make the ultimate choice on this ‘product’ that better befits their values, beliefs and aspirations.

Saying that Islam and secularism are competing ‘products’ does not mean that both are mutually exclusive and perfectly dichotomised. There are still many areas in which Islam and secularism share common grounds, and PAS believes that there is nothing in Islam that prohibits it in collaborating to enhance these shared interests. Simply put it, competition does not mean enmity.

The future of PAS, I believe, lies in its ability to convince the general public that Islam as a democratic political product is able to enhance the people’s ability to attain happiness in relation to the state’s conduct.

Happiness could be attained when people are able to live up to their values, beliefs and aspirations. At least, people’s values, beliefs and aspirations must not be grossly undermined by the state’s conduct.

In reality, I agree that PAS has still a long way to go before it can claim that it has attained this objective. However, one cannot deny that the party has gone through a series of reforms and alignments to position itself towards achieving this goal, both in terms of its value judgment as well as its empirical judgment.

The March 8 general election results would place PAS in more pressing position to articulate its message more effectively.

However, I don’t forecast that PAS would face serious conflict between its values and empirical judgments as noted in the above letter.