The trial of sacked Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, which resumes on Monday, has left many Malaysians disillusioned with their government and with politics in general.

Matt Frei reports for BBC's Newsnight on the growing Islamic movement in Malaysia

One of the consequences has been that the Islamic PAS party is gaining more and more support.

I have just been to Kelantan, a state in the north east of Malaysia which has been ruled for 10 years by the Islamic PAS party. It is often described as an outpost of Islamic fundamentalism in the heart of south east Asia.

Kelantan has imposed a gentle form of fundamentalism. Adulterers do not get stoned and thieves do not get their hands chopped off.

It is not that the local government wants to be lenient. It has been forbidden from imposing such draconian measures by the more secular minded authorities in the federal capital Kuala Lumpur.

Fun is forbidden

So Kelantan has focused on sex and booze. Visiting this state is like being back at boarding school, or staying with my grandparents at the age of 10. All the fun things are forbidden.

It goes without saying that the most intoxicating drink in your hotel mini-bar is a fluorescent orangeade: no alcohol but aggressively fizzy.

The Anwar trial has disillusioned people

As a man you can not get your hair cut by a woman. Hotels are building separate pools for men and women. Ladies and girls can only dive in fully dressed, headscarves flying, which, in my book, defeats the point of swimming, especially in the monsoon heat.

The genders have to stand in separate queues at the supermarket - just in case they should be over-come by passion while waiting to pay for their frozen peas.

And, perhaps most bizarrely of all, the lights in Kelantan's three cinemas are never fully dimmed, so that the ushers can spot which couples are no longer concentrating on the film's plot, and tell the authorities.

The morally righteous man

The man who dreamt up most of these rules is Chief Minister Nik Aziz. A a kind, devout and humble mullah, Nik Aziz is revered like a saint by his followers. He has shunned the official chief minister's residence and lives in his native village.

His party's support is growing nation-wide. The political purge of the former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has brought out the worst in the ruling party and its autocratic prime minister.

Such is the disillusionment with the Mahatir government that even some secular Malays are flocking to PAS. Like most clerical politicians, Nick Aziz is not exactly tortured with self doubt.

Swimming for girls means diving in fully clothed

"Why are the lights on in the cinema?" we asked him. "It's obvious," he said, "People can watch all these films on video at home. So if they want to see them in a dark cinema , they can only have one thing in mind, can't they?"

It is the warped but iron-clad logic of the morally righteous.

But what makes Nik Aziz's mission for morality seem almost heroic is its futility. Squeaky clean Kelantan has the geographical misfortune of bordering southern Thailand.

Sin next door

The Islamic movement is growing rapidly

This is like Alcoholics Anonymous sharing their premises with an off-licence. Temptation lurks just across the border in the form of a whole city devoted to sex, booze and gambling. Such is the demand that even the prices are quoted in ringgit, Malaysia's currency.

It is a one-way traffic into Thailand. Hundreds of cars cross the frontier of sin every day, driving past giant posters warning of the dangers of Aids.

While new garish hotels are sprouting on the Thai side, Kelantan with its deserted golden beaches has only one resort hotel, where the swimming pool is green and viscous and the cockroaches make you feel like the intruder. In other words the kind of place where you absolutely need a double whiskey to survive.

"Why," I asked Nik Aziz, "did he think tourism had collapsed in Kelantan?"