COMMENT | One of the signs of the end of times is when religious clerics permit the impermissible. Stealing is wrong. Yet when it is qualified with the word "rationalisation", suddenly it becomes right again.

1MDB is built on funds borrowed from various banks in the guise of developing the country, yet allegedly squandered without a sen seen in Malaysia, except what 1MDB ostensibly claimed: that RM56 million was spent on sending Muslim pilgrims to their haj.

Now, since when can allegedly stolen money be used to serve a religious end? Besides, isn't that the job of Tabung Haji? At more than RM200 million a year, it sends some 29,000 Muslims to pilgrimage annually.

Why is 1MDB, a company that has yet to make money, let alone pay back the US$6.5 billion it borrowed from IPIC, suddenly passionate in the religious business? Wouldn't it have sufficed to transfer the RM56 million to Tabung Haji to defray its cost?

All the lines of communication have become short-circuited and crossed, precisely because politics have been made the rule of the game. Instead of sheer economic rationale, a combo of politics and religion have come into play to pull wools over the eyes of the believers and Malaysians alike, especially the rural Malay Muslims.

By listening to 1MDB chief Arul Kanda Kandasamy, PAS has seemingly given the country’s sovereign wealth fund a clean bill of health. But what about four issues that remain unresolved?

1. Why does 1MDB keep missing its payments to IPIC?

2. Why does 1MDB not initiate legal actions to recover the seized properties in US?

3. Why does 1MDB not initiate legal actions to recover the monies paid to the fake Aabar BVI (British Virgin Islands)?

4. Why did 1MDB parcel out Bandar Malaysia to the Ministry of Finance when this was the jewel of its crown...