I was both amused and appalled by the letter Gempar bumi peringkatan dari Allah SWT . The writer has the blasphemous temerity to attribute a tragic occurrence to the deliberate action of God.

Thousands of Indonesians on an isolated island off the west coast of Sumatra have unfortunately perished because of a natural disaster, and the writer claims it a 'divine warning'.

So, according to this mischievous person and some Arabs, during the recent tsunami calamity, God frivolously struck down innocents because for some apparent reason they were wicked. Or has the divine retribution suffered unto those poor innocent Sumatrans been to warn Malaysians to pull up their socks?

There is no lower moral depth than what the writer has sunk to.

If God wants to make a lesson out of immoral behaviour, He should smite those who had commercially belittled His great name, like blasphemously selling tickets to heaven on His behalf under the condition that those desiring the 'guaranteed' passageway voted for a Malaysian political party.

God should rain fire and brimstone on those who used His glorious name to terrify and then leer and ogle at women detained at a nightclub.

We have seen many, even in the West, who exploit God's name for their nefarious agenda. When the township of Fallujah in Iraq was about to be mercilessly pounded by the US Goliath, an American Marine Corp colonel, Gary Brandl, stated: 'The enemy has a face. It is Satan's. He is in Fallujah, and we are going to destroy him'.

Would the writer then agree that with the sheer destruction of Fallujah, Satan was destroyed by God's Will, or has the massacre been the work of Satan himself?

These are ample reasons why religion must always be a private issue, and never a state doctrine.