I refer to the letter Our obsession with religion and ethnicity . I agree that for Malaysia to move forward as a nation and tackle many of the social and economic-related issues such as affordable healthcare, efficient public transport, good quality education, employment opportunities and so on, it would require us to look beyond the prism of religion and ethnicity.

While I agree with the writer on the obsession of Malaysians with their ethnicity and religion, I also think there are good reasons why ethnicity and religion are such an the overriding concern among Malaysians.

One of the reasons for this is because of the way politics is structured and the way economic privileges are dispensed according to racial profiling. The politics of ethnicity has not only bred race as the identity through which we identify ourselves, but it has also limited our ability to appreciate and celebrate the diverse values that we have and share.

These includes our values for living in a corruption-free country; for enjoying a good quality of healthcare; for demanding better and higher quality of education; for questioning the worrying rate of crime; for demanding efficiency in service from government and private institutions and for resisting the suppression of our identity into an impoverished little box of race.

It must also be noted that the values and identities we reflect as Malaysians are essentially dependent on the degree to which we use our democratic space and civil rights in debating, formulating and inquiring about our identity beyond the mere confines of race and religion.

I would argue that our insecurity regarding identity in Malaysia at present is largely because of the lack of democratic space in experimenting with 'who we are as Malaysians'. Such articulation is urgently needed if we, as Malaysians, are to move beyond the narrow identity of race and religion.

In the case of Malaysia, our identity could be as rich as any other country if we consider the diversity of our population not only in terms of their race and religion but also in terms of their contributions and achievements to architecture, food, music, art, science, literature and other fields. These contributions must be openly acknowledged and celebrated without first assessing which racial or religious group contributed to its success.

Our obsession is only dangerous if 'ethnicity and religion' becomes the only way in which we identify ourselves to the exclusion of everything else.