COMMENT | The latest controversy over who was it that had made the overture to PAS to join the government will end in smoke and mirrors.

In other words, it will be an exercise in futility.

The contretemps is a distraction from what ought to be the real discussion: whether Anwar Ibrahim’s government has a better grip on how Islam is to be used in the building of civil society.

The ideological foundations for that construct can be drawn from Rachid Ghannouchi, the Tunisian who Time magazine had ranked in 2012 as one of the top 100 influential public figures in the world...