COMMENT | Some people compared the fall of Kabul with the chaotic final days of Muhyiddin Yassin's rule of Malaysia. No! They are wrong.

Try and see it this way. The events in Kabul are more like the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979. The Iranian revolution, also known as the Islamic revolution that followed, was a resurgence of Islam, not just in the former Imperial state of Persia, but it also accelerated Islamisation in Malaysia.

The two main protagonists then were Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was alarmed by the rise of PAS, and Anwar Ibrahim, the Malaysian Islamic Youth Movement (Abim) leader, who Mahathir engaged to do his dirty work. The rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward to 21st Century Malaysia, and the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan will undoubtedly embolden PAS, which has never abandoned its idea of a syariah-governed Malaysia.

They will be successful, but only if you let them. Instead of moving into the future, we know that PAS, like the Taliban, has gone backwards in time. We do not need medieval methods of punishment...