What a haughty, arrogant but misconceived and misinformed response from Hadi.

It is PAS President Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang’s prerogative to dismiss any possibility of working with DAP, but he has no right to turn and twist facts to justify his position.

It is not the DAP but Hadi as PAS President who violated the Pakatan Rakyat Common Policy Framework and the Pakatan Rakyat consensus principle that all decisions in Pakatan Rakyat coalition should be reached by consensus of all the three component parties.

But the last straw that broke the camel’s back was when Hadi vetoed what had been agreed by the Pakatan Rakyat leadership council with PAS represented by its Deputy President and Secretary-General, demonstrating that Hadi not only wanted to be a dictator in PAS but also in Pakatan Rakyat.

Hadi should look into the mirror when he alleged that the DAP has failed to look after the interest of the people of Penang, although it had one term to do so.

Lest Hadi forgets, DAP-led Pakatan Rakyat won 30 state assembly seats in the 2013 general elections as compared to 29 seats in the 2008 general election.

In the 2013 general election, DAP not only won all the 19 seats it won in the 2008 general elections, but with a bigger majority in everyone of the 19 seats, with majority as big as more than 300 per cent as in the case of Chong Eng in the Padang Lalang seat where she won with a 14,930- vote majority as compared to the 4,242-vote DAP majority in 2008 general election and of over 400% increase as in Padang Kota where Chow Kong Yeow won with 7,196-vote majority as compared to 1,661-vote majority in 2008; and in Pulau Tikus where Yap Soo Huey won with a 8,220-vote majority as compared to 1,714-vote majority in 2008 and in Seri Delima where RSN Ryer won with 9,227-vote majority as compared to 2,128-vote majority in 2008.

In contrast, Hadi was thrown out of the Terengganu state government after one term as Mentri Besar. In the 1999 Terengganu state general elections, thanks to the Anwar “reformasi” wave, Hadi became Terengganu Mentri Besar with PAS winning 28 out of the 32 state assembly seats, winning 87.5% of the popular vote in the state.

In the 2004 general elections, an astounding reverse took place, with Hadi thrown out as Mentri Besar when UMNO won 28 out of the 32 state assembly seats, leaving PAS with only 4 seats but its popular vote crashed from 87.5% in 1999 to 12.5%.

Can Hadi explain such a great contrast in popular support for the DAP-led state government in Penang as compared to his ignominious one term as Teregganu Mentri Besar?

But no purpose can be served by crying over spilt milk and we must move on.

Hadi is wrong when he insinuated that I am anti-Islam, and I am asking my lawyer to study the possibility of instituting legal action against Hadi for accusing me of being anti-Islam.

I am not anti-Islam and I support the inclusive, enlightened, progressive and tolerant Islamic vision as spelt out in the “PAS for ALL” slogan in the 2013 general elections.

However, I cannot support an intolerant and extremist Islamic vision, whether by Islamic State or by any Islamic leader claiming to use Islam to hide their extremism and intolerance.

Hadi’s response make me think of three things:

The first was what the great Islamic scholar of the 19th century, Muhammad Abduh wrote, after his return from France in 1888, that “I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam”.

It is sad that there are Muslim leaders in Malaysia who refuse to recognise that core values such as integrity, freedom, human rights, and justice, are universal and do not conflict with Islam or any religion and are in fact important constituents of Islamic teachings.

Secondly, the report that Ireland leads the world in Islamic values as Muslim states lag, based on an index of Economic Islamcity or how closely the policies and achievements of countries reflect Islamic economic teachings and the study of 208 countries and territories by an academic at George Washington University.

Hossein Askari, an Iranian-born professor of International Business and International Affairs at George Washington University, said Muslim countries used religion as an instrument of state control.

He said: “We must emphasise that many countries that profess Islam and are called Islamic are unjust, corrupt, and underdeveloped and are in fact not ‘Islamic’ by any stretch of the imagination.

“Looking at an index of Economic Islamicity, or how closely the policies and achievements of countries reflect Islamic economic teachings – Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, Finland, Norway, and Belgium round up the first 10”.

Thirdly, the just-released Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2016, where nine of the ten most corrupt countries of the world are members of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), viz: (ranging from rankings 166 – 175: Iraq, Guinea-Bissau, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, Korea (North), South Sudan and Somalia.

The TI CPI 2016 seems to vindicate Hossein Askari’s thesis, that the Koran’s teachings are better represented in Western societies than in Islamic countries, which have failed to embraced the values of their own faith in politics, business, law and society.

It would appear that Hadi does not mind Malaysia becoming a global kleptocracy under his concept of a Islamic Malaysia.

I do not think even PAS members could accept such a concept, if its full impliclations are understood by PAS members and the Malaysian public.

(Media Conference Statement after the Penang Chief Minister’s Chinese New Year Open House at SPICE, Penang on Saturday, 28th January 2017 at 12.30 pm)