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Malaysia appears determined to make an international fool of itself. The latest news, according to Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, the women’s minister, is that the country is considering organizing an international conference on caning and whether it is an appropriate punishment for women under Islamic law.

The announcement by Shahrizat comes on the heels of a government statement last week, nine days after the fact, that a Shariah court had ordered the caning of three women for adultery. A fourth, far more publicized, is the case of Kartika Dewi Shukarni, a part-time model who was ordered by a Shariah court to be caned for drinking beer. The case is still up in the air while the regent of Pahang state decides how to treat the matter.

This all is in addition to the widely publicized show trial of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on charges of consensual sex with a male, a selective prosecution at best even if he did it, since Kuala Lumpur is thronged with gay bars, and political persecution at the worst over widespread suspicion that the charges were trumped up. There is also the January violence in the wake of a High Court judge’s decision to allow the Malaysian Catholic Church to use the word Allah as a synonym for God in the Malay-language editions of its newspaper, the Catholic Herald. Eleven churches, a Sikh temple and two Muslim prayer rooms were attacked.

Many critics hold Malaysia’s largest political party, the United Malays National Organization, responsible for fanning racial disharmony. In the cases of the prayer rooms, eight UMNO members were arrested for attacking them in an apparent attempt to make it look like either Chinese or Indians had done it. There are similar suspicions that ethnic Malays had thrown pigs’ heads with money in their mouths into mosques in Kuala Lumpur.

That, plus the continuing political turmoil, appears to be driving up flight capital totals and citizens who are leaving along with their money. And it is giving international investors some serious second thoughts at a time when the export-led economy is finally starting to emerge from the global financial crisis that began in October 2008.

Although caning is officially outlawed in only 25 countries, it is rare in a lot more, and in very few is it practiced as barbarically — on men — as it is in Malaysia, which until quite recently was regarded by the world as one of the globe’s most advanced Islamic states.

Now that reputation is in shreds, largely driven not by religion but by politics. The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), a traditionally conservative opposition Islamic party, has expressed concern about the canings. It may well be that PAS will end up more lenient on caning than the UMNO, and thus draw in alienated moderate Malays. Dzulkefly Ahmad, the Islamist party’s chief strategist, called the canings politically motivated and said Islamic justice calls for fairness without cruelty or corruption.

The caning itself makes one wonder if Malaysia can do anything right. Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters the caning “did not injure them, [but] the three women said it caused pain within their souls.”

One would assume that the purpose of corporal punishment is to cause pain. And when it is done to males in Malaysia and other countries that were once part of the British empire, the damage from the rotan , a thick rattan whip, can be so traumatic that they pass out after one or two strokes. Offenders have been known to beg for more prison time to escape the rotan. Authorities use only a light rattan stick to hit women on their backs.

So what the caning of the women has done is to show that to much of the world the authorities look like barbarians, while to the rest of it they look like fools for sparing the rod and trying to have it both ways. Certainly, the outcry across both Malaysia and the world should have been enough to give pause to the government.

Rights organizations also object on the basis that Malaysia has a two-tier justice system. Muslims come under the jurisdiction of the Shariah courts, while the other 40 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people, mostly ethnic Chinese and Indians, come under the regular civil courts. Under the country’s civil justice system, flogging of women is forbidden. Thus, the rights groups say, Muslim women are being discriminated against.

But this is not particularly a product of Islam. Judicial corporal punishment in Asia is practiced only in countries formerly ruled by the British. The late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto put an end to the practice in Pakistan.

Despite the concerns over the Anwar trial, which has drawn criticism from lawmakers in Australia and the United States as trumped up to snuff out a legitimate opposition, tourism visits are up — or were, hitting about 1.5 million from January 2009, a rise of 7.2 percent year-on-year in October. Expectations of a double-digit increase in 2010 tourism may be dampened by the publicity.

John Berthelsen is editor in chief of Asia Sentinel.