The  Kota Baru City Council (MPKB) will not issue any new licences for unisex salons, claimed MCA.

According to Kelantan MCA information chief Tan Ken Ten, he had checked with the council to verify complaints made and found this to be true.

“I double checked with council insiders and they confirmed this to be true. I was shocked to find out about this because it will greatly affect the hairdressing industry,” Sunday Star reported him as saying.

This follows Sin Chew Daily ’s report on Friday that hairdresser Alice Ong Lee Ruong was issued a summons for styling a male customer.

According to the Sunday Star , Ong had been applying for a licence since 2011 but has yet to receive it purportedly because it is “still being processed”.

Meanwhile, the newspaper also reported that Kelantan's Islamic affairs, education and dakwah committee chairperson Mohd Amar Abdullah was in the dark about the controversy.

However, he was reported as saying that there have been complaints from Muslims that hair salons were a “hotbed” for vice.

“The by-laws were enforced and designed not to leave any room for this. I cannot comment on the by-laws covering non-Muslims,” he was quoted as saying.

'Non-Muslims be warned'

Meanwhile, in an editorial, New Straits Times Publications group managing editor A Jalil Hamid said that such incidents foreshadow how life would be like for non-Muslims if PAS takes over the federal government.

Jalil said gender segregation and other by-laws in Kelantan and Kedah do affect non-Muslims and is a “mockery of PAS' official stand that they (Islamic laws) do not apply to Muslims.”

“PAS has kept insisting that the much-feared hudud law would not cover non-Muslims and, as such they should not lose sleep over it.

“But nobody can deny that hudud will have far-reaching implications on the country's constitution and the rule of law and the way of life of Muslims and non-Muslims alike,” he said.