I refer to two recent letters published by malaysiakini and wish to respond to them. The first o­ne is Not all Muslims are silent o­n Iraqi regime by a Muslim Academic.

I agree with the writer that not all Muslims in Malaysia are supportive of the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein who have killed more Muslims than any other country or people. However, how widespread is this knowledge about the nature and record of the Saddam Hussein's regime is subject to dispute.

In my opinion, o­nly English-educated Malays/Muslims in Malaysia who have access to the Internet know about it, but what about the majority who are monolingual (Bahasa Malaysia) and o­nly read Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian everyday? To recognise this is not to promote despair, but a challenge for us to do more in educating the ordinary Muslims (and all Malaysians).

This brings me to the second letter, namely TFP's Arab regimes use anti-Americanism to divert attention . I think the letter is well written and very insightful.

My observation is that Dr Mahathir Mohamad and the Umno propagandists are also exploiting and even promoting anti-Americanism here in Malaysia to divert attention of the people from domestic issues, such as the judicial rots, lack of academic freedom, erosion of parliamentary democracy, free press, ISA detentions, corruption, nepotism and cronyism, etc.

Exploiting and promoting anti-Americanism to preserve the class interests and political autoritarianism of the status quo is not exclusively Arabic, but also very Malaysian. In Malaysia, we can clearly see a group of so-called intellectuals and writers almost specialising in full-time anti-Americanism and professional US-bashing.

They seem to work to prevent any opening of the Malay/Muslim minds in Malaysia for greater human rights and democratic debates. However, I think they are doomed to fail because after 1998, Malays/Muslims in Malaysia have largely become more critical in their thinking.

It is no longer easy to divert our attention by promoting jeolousy-motivated and hatred-based anti-Americanism simply because the hedonistic Umno is now seen to be a larger and more imminent threat to the good values of Islam (and of other religions).

There is hope for Muslims in Malaysia to break free from the sterile anti-Americanism, and to participate in the democratic struggle in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious Malaysia.