Racism is always around in Malaysia and is very much alive. The difference between the rantings you and I throw in private and what the Bapa Kemodenan (Father of Modernisation) did is that he does it on the world stage.

If he wants to represent the essence of what is good in Malaysia, he should not put on display to all and sundry the evil side of himself. The fact that private individuals in the US make snide comments about Islam and get pounced on by their own people is proof that the system there works. He should not use private statements made by private individuals in the US and Europe as justification for him to do the same.

It is exactly the same kind of tit-for-tat mentality that has self-perpetuated the Arab-Israeli conflict and the resort to terrorism amongst some Muslims. Has he not something more constructive to offer?

Here we have a head of a government expressing an opinion he represents as fact, even if shared by many Malaysians in private, but certainly not all, making us all look like semi-civilised beings. Yet he stands steadfastly by his words and we Malaysian lemmings have to put on a display of defending him and looking exactly like the non-thinking morons he derides.

Look at what the Jews are saying now - hey finally, an official admission on the world stage that Muslims are a violent, non-thinking people doomed to backwardness. Do you see Arabs who are the ones facing the arrogance of Israel making similar comments? Surely, people of a 3,000 year old civilisation do not need to be shown the light by people they had to teach revelations of the Koran to. No, they simply know better than to be loud-mouthed.

The "facts" he quotes such as democracy being an invention of the Jews are wrong, calling into question the soundness and validity of whatever else he says. Imagine people of the Chinese diaspora everywhere being labeled enemies of Islam if one day the simmering Muslim restlessness in Xinjiang breaks out in runaway violence.

Does Ah Kow in Jalan Petaling deserve the label of having invented gunpowder that will then be used to quell Muslim unrest in Xinjiang? Is he then also an enemy of all Muslims worldwide? That's a bigger sweeping statement than the biggest brooms Alam Flora can muster to sweep the streets of Kuala Lumpur and he knows that very well.

By stooping to such low standards of decency, he becomes one with those whose morals he so eloquently denigrates. And hurray for the possibly irreparable damage to the country's economy and image from the man who led us to the heights of modernity and then back to the depths just weeks before he leaves.

He insists he has the right to do so. He has but the later years of his life to face the consequences. Our young people will have to pay for the consequences of his folly for years to come.