Malaysia’s new tourist motto: Drink a beer - get caned
The 32-year-old will receive six lashes at a woman’s prison next week in what is being viewed as an example of the growing influence of Islamic hardliners on the country.
The mother-of-two who lives in Singapore with her husband, paid a fine of 860, but declined to lodge an appeal so she could get the punishment over with and put the episode behind her.
The harsh sentence has provoked anger among women’s rights groups who fear it is another sign of the creeping influence of conservative Islam on Malaysian society.
In the northern backwater state of Kalentan ruled by the hardline Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, authorities have decreed that supermarkets must have separate checkout queues for men and women and beaches be segregated.
Young couples caught sitting too close together on park benches in the state capital, Kota Baru, are hunted down by the city’s moral enforcers and fined up to 285 in Sharia courts.
The Islamic alcohol prohibition laws in Malaysia’s eastern Pahang state date back more than t