Read The Faith Central blog on women in Malaysia

Women who wear figure-hugging clothes are giving Muslim men sleepless nights and distracting them from prayer, a prominent cleric said yesterday.

Attacking the appeal of modern Malaysian women, Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat — a fundamentalist Muslim cleric who controls the main opposition party and one of the country’s 13 states — said that provocative clothes were a form of “emotional abuse”.

Clothes that are modest by Western standards were, he said, stopping the country’s men getting a good night’s sleep. “We always [hear about] the abuse of children and wives in households, which is easily perceived by the eye but the emotional abuse of men cannot be seen,” Mr Nik Abdul Aziz said. “Our prayers become unfocused and our sleep is often disturbed.” Like so many of his previous outbursts, the comments drew instant criticism from women’s groups.

Previous advice from Mr Nik Abdul Aziz to Malaysia’s women included the suggestion that they would be at a lower risk of being raped if they abandoned their lipstick and perfume. Mr Nik Abdul Aziz posted a diagram of an appropriately dressed woman on his party’s website. The picture shows a woman in a baggy, floor-length dress with a scarf covering her hair.

As the minister of the northeastern state of Kelantan, Mr Nik Abdul Aziz has imposed fines on Muslim women who fail to wear headscarves, and imposed other draconian restrictions. As well as describing smokers as “similar to certain animals which have no brains to think rationally”, he also argued that they should not be allowed to run as candidates in a general election.

He has heavily criticised Malaysia’s endemic corruption, describing bribe-takers as intellectual weaklings who are destined for an eternity in Hell.

Mr Nik Abdul Aziz did reveal a liberal streak this year when he revoked a 15-year ban on snooker. He was responsible for the original ban, imposed because the game appeared to encourage gambling.