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"We want our members to start thinking like statesmen," Salehuddin said.
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CAIRO — Keen to wash away its "insular" image, the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) has launched a campaign to reason with prostitutes throughout the country to seek another source of living.
"We want PAS Youth to go out and serve the community, regardless of political beliefs," Salehuddin Ayub, the party's youth chief, told the daily English-language New Straits Times on Sunday, December 24.
Under the "ambassadors of love and relief" plan, volunteering trained counselors will meet with prostitutes and encourage them not only to get off the streets but out of the business altogether.
There are no figures for the number of prostitutes operating in Malaysia.
Since 2004 until July this year, about 15,500 foreign women had been arrested for prostitution in the Asian Muslim country, mostly from China, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Prostitution is banned in Muslim-dominant Malaysia and is considered a criminal offence.
Malaysia offers the image of a ideal Muslim country, heading towards the status of developed nation with huge buildings, beautiful cities and a fast track economy.
Muslim Malays comprise about 60 percent of Malaysia’s 26 million people.
Ethnic Chinese and Indians - most of them Buddhists, Hindus and Christians - make up about 35 percent. The rest are indigenous people and Eurasians.
Statesmen
PAS Youth also plans an Islamic-style drug rehabilitation method, which is also part of its "love and relief" strategy, said Salehuddin.
The party has already opened up two centers in the states of Kelantan and Selangor in tandem with the Anti-Drug Agency and the National Association Against Drug Abuse.
Salehuddin asserted that the youth wing also provides counselors from among its ranks for government-run drug rehabilitation centers.
"We want our members to start thinking like statesmen," he said.
"They must not be seen as dogmatic and insular."
Once a growing opposition force, PAS suffered a humiliating defeat in general elections in 2004, leaving it in control of only the northeast state of Kelantan.
Since then, the party has been trying to polish its image and gain support among Malaysia's ethnic Chinese and Indian communities.
PAS has lifted a 15-year ban on the popular games of snooker and billiards and allowed cinemas to operate, although with the lights on to prevent any unseemly behavior.
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