Religious authority arrogance once again.

The Jabatan Agama Islam Wilayah Persekutuan (Jawi) raided a nightspot in Kuala Lumpur and, like the Gestapo hunting the Jews, asked non-Muslim patrons to move to another room while their Muslim friends were subjected to ill-treatment, abuse and such.

These sex-starved officers ogled at scantily-dressed Muslim girls under the guise of determining whether their dressing is an offence or not. When seeing pierced belly buttons, the self-righteous officers asked if their (the girls's) private parts were also pierced.

Girls who covered some parts of their body with their hands were told not to do so.

These Muslim patrons should have resisted such abuse. The girls should have defied the humiliating orders like removing their hands from covering their bodies and so on.

Would these Taliban-followers dare to physically abusive their detainees if the latter made life difficult for them? I don't think so, not after action taken by a 'higher authority' against the infamous arrest of three Malay beauty contestants in 1997 and the photo-taking incident involving a Rela member and a female detainee answering a call of nature.

We Malays should go further as to threaten to officially leave the religion in large numbers if that's what it takes to make the religious officials understand that we do not tolerate interference in our lives.

That is a more gentle approach, rather than public demonstrations and confrontations against these rights-infringing institutions.

A member of the raiding party was also reported to have commented that the recent devastating tsunami was God's punishment for the detainees' misleading ways.

I think it was God's punishment on us decent people for allowing such hypocrites to be in charge of religious affairs.