I am worried that bigotry, as is apparent in Menj's mindset, has followers in multi-cultural Malaysia.

It would do such people the world of good to heed the words of the philosopher S Radhakrishnan on the subject:

'When we assume that we have the beginning and the end of all spiritual wisdom and direction for all time and all mankind, it becomes our duty to impose it on others by force of arms or its subtler substitutes.

In the name of religion, men and women were put to death ... for doubting the verbal inspiration of the scriptures and such other innocent departures from orthodox doctrines. Spiritual absolutism is responsible for the judicial murders of some of the divinest figures of antiquity.

It exalts orthodoxy above holiness of life ... religion engenders a great love for a great hate. Every religion has its crusades, idolatry and heresy hunting. The cards and the game are the same, only the names are different.

Religious piety ... is out to destroy other religions, not for the sake of social betterment or world peace, but because such an act is acceptable to one's own jealous god. The more fervent the worship, the greater seems to be the tyranny of names.

By a fatal logic, the jealous god is supposed to ordain the destruction of those who worship him under other names ... we have developed a kind of patriotism about religion, with a code and a flag, and a hostile attitude towards other men's codes and creeds.'

Apart from acknowledging that the above is an excerpt from Radhakrishnan's book, An Idealist View of Life (which is substantively his Gifford Lectures delivered in 1929 and 1930 ) it would, I think, be superfluous to make any comments on the learned doctor's observations.