The government today promised to turn Kelantan into an Islamic civilisation centre of distinction and build more mosques in the state.

But this promise came with a caveat - the people of Kelantan must vote for the Barisan Nasional in the coming general election.

Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak said that the voters in that state must reject PAS which has ruled for the past 18 years if they want to see development and positive changes.

"We hope to win because it would speed up the process of building mosques and the Islamic civilisation centre in Kelantan," Najib was quoted as saying by Bernama today.

He said that if the BN was given the mandate to rule the state, the project to empower mosques would gather momentum.

On the other hand, he added, that the federal government would sill continue to construct mosques even if PAS was retained into power by the voters there.

Where is PAS’ Islam?

According to Bernama , Najib also lambasted PAS over their failure to build a single mosque in the state which is dubbed the Corridor of Mecca.

"There was an attempt to build a mosque in Rantau Panjang during the silver jubilee celebration last year but until now, the project has yet to be completed and is still abandoned,” he said.

“Where's the Islam propagated by PAS if it can't even build one mosque?" he asked.

Najib also likened Umno's efforts to empower Islam to Prophet Muhammad's struggle to develop the religion by building mosques before setting up an Islamic administration in Medina.

Najib, on a two-day official trip to Kelantan, had earlier attended a ground-breaking ceremony for the new mosque in An-Nur, Guchil.

He said that he construction of the new An-Nur mosque had a sentimental attachment to him as 40 years ago, the original mosque was built with an allocation approved by his father Razak Hussein, who was then the deputy prime minister.

"I'm touched that 40 years after my father came to open the mosque, which at that time cost RM35,000, what I (federal government) approve now is RM2.1 million and I'm also the deputy prime minister now," he said.

Umno, of which Najib is the deputy president, is trying hard to regain power in Kelantan. At the moment the party has only one seat less that PAS’ 23 seats in the state assembly.

BN also won nine parliament seats in Kelantan as opposed to the six won by PAS.