FEATURE "Tak kenal, maka tak cinta," mused Abdul Rahman Kasim, citing a Malay proverb in explanation of why he is at the heart of efforts to reach out across the gulfs that separate Muslims from others in Malaysian society.

This proverb does not have a ready equivalent in English. But once you take the English admonition "Familiarity breeds contempt" to be this saying's diametric opposite, you may well get the drift of "Tak kenal, maka tak cinta."

Directly translating the Malay into English as "To know is to love" is too simplistic a rendition of the actual meaning of this Bahasa Malaysia apothegm. Malay culture is said to imbue one in such a way that feeling counts for more than thought. Therefore, to know is indeed to love.

Rahman, in tandem with PAS parliamentarian Mujahid Yusof Rawa, and a slew of party activists in Penang, has come to be known in interfaith circles in the north of the peninsula as bridge builders in a time of mounting anxiety about racial-cum-religious divisions in Malaysia...