The enforcers of the Jabatan Agama Islam Selangor (Jais) raided the Ship Restaurant in Damansara Utama at midnight on June 10. They arrested 15 Muslim women who were huddled to a corner.

They face charges in an Islamic court in September for being in a restaurant where alcohol was served.

Jais became infamous when they crudely and over-zealously arrested three Malay-Muslim beauty queens in 1997. In the same year, a senior officer of Jais was indicted for misappropriating RM180,000 from the Zakat accounts.

The Jais enforcers appeared to have brushed the dust off the cover of their operational manual used previously by Duvaliers' Tonton Macoutes and used it again.

Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was morally courageous enough to say that it was "illogical". The chief mullah of the Barisan Nasional, Hamid Othman, is awaiting a report thus avoiding any comment. Meanwhile, the Mentri Besar of Selangor, Abu Hassan Omar, has become a church mouse.

It is a pity indeed that when the raid took place at the Ship, there was no royalty and children of the rich and famous cronies of the BN. Otherwise, Abu Hassan and Hamid Othman will be running around like two blue-arsed flies.

In Terengganu, PAS does not have to send their commando units 313 or Amal to enforce like Jais. Their mullahs in their sermons in the mosques and madrasahs decreed that if you were invited to a non-Muslim house for dinner or any form of dining, you bring your own kitchen and table wares because Muslims must eat off halal implements. Some believe in this idiocy and do not bother anymore to interact with non-Muslims.

Jais has many other pressing priorities e.g. enforcing the payments of alimonies to destitute wives and gantung-wives and the upkeep of their children. I often wonder why there is this constant desire to push Muslims into straight jackets on some vague edicts. They should also look into why there is a corresponding increase of social ills when almost all mosques are packed with believers.

I am not fighting against the spirit of Islam. Is there nobody in Islam who can innovate to provide the necessities of modernity?

The way I see it, Umno is in a spiritual panic to be holier than PAS. The Jais raid is a manifestation of this tension. PAS has a serendipitous Trojan horse in Hamid Othman. He wants to drag civil servants to drink in the spiritual river, as it were, whether they will drink it or not is wallahu a'lam.

The moral-social situation of the Holy Prophet's Arabia in the 7th century is not exactly the same as it is in plural Malaysia today. If we continue to exaggerate religious sentiments callously and blindly, we shall destroy our motherland by default. Religious belief is between God and the beholder, do not drag us to the river.

ROBITA T. ABDULLAH is a freelance writer based in Terengganu.