An increasing source of conflict in the world today is centred on religion believers’ demands for respect. Religion has become a sensitive issue in most societies and criticising or being disrespectful to other people’s faith and religion is not considered civil among Malaysians of all races and religions.

It is somewhat natural for a sensible person to react to hurt feelings with a bit of sensitivity when there is conflict of this nature. As for our country, there seems to be an overemotional sensitivity towards religion due to our multi-racial and multi-religion set-up plus communal differences and economic disparities.

The lack of cultural understanding and religious moderation are indeed two elements that have aggravated the situation. This phenomenon is less conspicuous in secular societies like in Europe.

Secularism advocates the fundamental principles of accepting differences through the acceptance of a common and fair subset of the universal principles and values for all mankind. With this sprouts genuine principles of moderation and understanding of each another’s sensitivity.

This is stressed upon in their education system, where children are taught to be more open when it comes to faith and culture.

Religion usually merits deference from its followers. However, religious beliefs cannot be absolutely defined and be accepted by all people at all times as different religions have different tags as rigid dogmas to be duly accepted by their followers.

Even if one claims the absoluteness of one’s religion, there is bound to be some disagreement that could lead to differences. This has even been observed within a single religion that has shared the same roots with another religion.

Despite 50 years of independence, Malaysians are still at loggerheads when it comes to religious issues. There seems to be no solution to this dilemma. To some, it seems like the less religion is talked about and discussed, the better for the nation.

There are still many people out there who are not really ready to accept openness for inter- religion debates due to personal as well as political reasons.

It looks like if we want respect and tolerance for each another’s religion and want to make Malaysians more open-minded, it has to start at a tender age and that is at the primary school stage through an unbiased national education system.

Understanding and moderation are the two best ways to inculcate tolerance in our society and this has to start from young through a revamped national education policy. The issue now is that our education system is too varied that we find schools and colleges that are defined along racial and even religious lines.

We have the vernacular, religious and national schools and as such the process of making children see fairness and inculcating tolerance through cultural understanding to advocate religious moderation may not be that easy.

What we fear most for the country now is that the people are becoming more polarised through the education system many also fear that the vision of creating a religiously tolerant and moderate society may not happen at all in this country.

When children learn, play and grow up in a school which is multi-racial and multi-religious, the bond among them becomes a natural thing. Pupils at this age see no difference between them as we see them mixing freely without prejudice.

It is only when the formal teaching begins and adults come in, that they start seeing the differences between them. We keep on swaying our children’s minds with thoughts that we are all different and that we have to stay different with regards to the cultural and religious aspects of our lives. Alas, our education system has failed to address this facet of our society.

Apparently, in the Malaysian context, cultural and religious dissimilarities have yet to be identified as being remarkable possessions to be appreciated and willingly shared among the people to learn from each other’s beliefs and values.

Malaysians should be reminded that all religions seek respect. Followers of all religions demand for respect. For a better Malaysia, this should be the order of the day.

Sad to say, at the rate we are progressing now we are destined to fail and perpetually may not be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.