I refer to the letter Fatwa council extremely visionary .

There is an innate need in our hearts to identify with our religions, both for protection and for security, to discover and affirm our identity, and to use religion to prove our worthiness and goodness, indeed, even to prove that we are better than others.

It is my belief that it is not religion or culture at the root of human conflict but the way in which groups use religion or culture to dominate one another.

Let me hasten to add that if it were not religion or culture that groups used as a stick with which to beat others, they would just use something else.

The illusion of being superior in our religious beliefs engenders the need to prove it; and so oppression is born. We build walls around our religious group and cultivate our certitudes. Prejudice grows on such walls.

How did we, the human race, get to this position where we judge it natural not just to segregate ourselves into religious groups, but to set ourselves, group against group, religion against religion, race against race, in order to establish some ephemeral sense of superiority.

One of the fundamental issues before these fatwa rulings are made is ascertain if the specific office or council has the jurisdiction to do it. They need to examine it competently first.

That which is more important for us to examine is how to break down these walls of prejudice that separates one religious group from another, how to open up one to another; how to create trust and places of dialogue.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Buddhist who won the Nobel Prize wrote, ‘All barriers of race and religion can be overcome when people work together in common endeavours, based on consideration and understanding. Together we can help create a harmony, better world, self-will and ill-will are minimised.

‘This is not impractical idealism; it is a down-to-earth recognition of our greatest needs. Sometimes it takes courage to grapple with the difficulty that lie in the path of creating an environment of unity. Decisions may have to be made and prejudices overcome.’

I am proud of the statement from the office of the Sultan of Selangor. The sultan has exuded some caution and wisdom. The same goes to the Raja Muda of Perak. They have shown maturity in addressing this yoga fatwa ruling and have diffused the spark of making a mountain out o a molehill.