Catholic Bishop Emeritus Paul Tan Chee Ing hailed the government's decision not to “take over” PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang's private member's bill to further empower syariah courts as “a step away from an otherwise inexorable drift towards an Islamic state”.
“The BN government has stepped away from a measure that would have accelerated our decades-long drift towards Islamisation of the laws and governance in Malaysia,” Bishop Paul told Malaysiakini today.