Those on the Sangkancil Internet forum, which I run with Bala Pillai, are held hostage by Islamic vigilantes, who would divert into irrelevant mud-slinging whenever Islam is mentioned in however innocuous a context, so that their 'noise' drives out all but the daring to dip their toes in.

It is difficult enough to persuade Malaysians to speak their thoughts the walls have ears, the Special Branch listens in, our jobs and our families would be in danger, I am told, that if they agree to what is 'officially' disapproved. No matter what the topic, few would dare express an opinion. Bala in Sydney and I in Kuala Lumpur decided from the start that it would be unmoderated. And so it has in the eight years it has been around. More than 2,000 members are on it, but debate is all but non-existent.

Sangkancil discussed and commented on issues with a vigor until after the 1999 general elections, when the Barisan Nasional (BN) won with non-Malay support. The non-Malay, the intellectual, the moderate, the non-theocratic Muslims were set upon by these religious vigilantes, so powerful that no one would challenge them.

They hold every government department to ransom that senior officers have to comply or find their careers cut short. The non-Malay is kept in his place, and told, often enough, he ought to return from whence he came. We had an armed forces chief who encouraged this fanaticism in the armed forces. The BN government is held hostage, too, and unwilling to confront these bigots and vigilantes.

I am attacked in the past fortnight by a young obviously well-educated Malay lady who insists that I, as a ' pendatang' (immigrant, which I am not), should not roil the Malay peace by raising issues that would. She hopes all pendatang would leave, for they are a nuisance.

I asked her what would happen if the pendatang left, especially since every one of our five prime ministers were pendatang or had pendatang blood: Tengku Abdul Rahman (Thai), Abdul Razak Hussein (Bugis), Hussein Onn (Circassian-English), Dr Mahathir Mohamad (Indian), Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (Sino-Indian). But her objection to me is that I am a non-Muslim pendatang .