As a non-resident Malaysian, I have been reading the recent letters on the Jawi debacle with great interest and concern in particular the letter Jawi out to make us like the Irish.

VS Naipaul, in his book, Among the believers and Beyond belief wrote: 'Islam is an Arab religion, and it makes imperial Arabising demand on its converts ... People develop fantasies about who and what they are'.

The above line, unfortunately, describes Jawi to the T. The Malays of yesteryear were more at peace with their Islam. Malays are not Arabs. And now there are laws to govern the Malay-Muslim behaviour.

Farish A Noor wrote in his three-part essay on Malaysia's rising 'religio-facists' that whoever controls the Malay-Muslims controls the country. In some ways, this is nothing short of a divide-and-rule policy.

http://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/33323

The losers in this poor attempt to control society are the Malay-Muslims themselves. Already, the urban Malay is being squeezed out by his brothers who grew up without their non-Malay neighbours.

A cautionary example for these 'religio-fascists' should be Pakistan, a Muslim country. In their zeal to create a complete Islamic society, the rule of law percept introduced by the British there was dismantled and replaced with laws which did and still do not reflect the needs of the population.

The end results - hegemony and a continuing brain-drain.