If the Malays are serious about change, there are some unpleasant truths they need to acknowledge.

If you are Malay, and speak to members of your family or friends who attended religious schools, you will learn that their experience of being beaten has left them traumatised. They retaliate by disrespecting authority. Others become jaded by religion. They are mentally scarred because their concerns were dismissed when they sought their parents’ help. They feel twice betrayed. For many Malay parents, religious teachers can do no wrong.

The Malay carries an enormous amount of emotional baggage. On one hand, he is told he is the master race, but the children feel they are treated like slaves, especially when they are beaten-up.

The other baggage piled onto his shoulders, is that to disobey a religious teacher is tantamount to disobeying the word of God, or of insulting Islam. Our indoctrination is so strong.

The Malay may recognise the need for change, but he is held back by a massive mental block, introduced by the religious men, by his political leaders and by his elders. The Malay is hesitant about using logic and reason, as the effect of tribalism, and hell-fire talk has reduced his mind to a pulp. He is warned against questioning authority figures.

When 11-year old boy Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi was admitted to hospital, we were given daily updates on his condition. His legs were amputated. His right arm turned necrotic. He was put into an induced coma. We were told the grim reasons behind his hospitalisation.

You would have thought that the interested parties, like the Welfare Department, the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry, as well as the Education Ministry, Islamic Development Department of Malaysia (Jakim) and the various state religious departments would take a keen interest.

Did their spokespersons try to reassure the public that the tahfiz schools would be inspected, to check and see if the welfare of the students and running of the schools were fine? There are around 1,200 of these types of schools in Malaysia. No, they did not!

The various ministers only crawled out of the woodwork on the day Thaqif died; then they made numerous promises.

As this was a school, albeit a tahfiz school, you would have expected the education minister to suspend the school, send the pupils home, inspect the records, quiz the principal and other teachers, and issue a statement to reassure the public. The minister’s response was too little, too late.

In the week in which the nation was praying that little Thaqif would pull through, we did not hear from Jakim, the body which monitors and manages Islamic issues in Malaysia? Nor did we hear from Jamil Khir Baharom, the Minister for Islamic affairs...