I met a person sometime back who used to work for a British non-governmental organisation in Malaysia during the 1960s. My first question, as always, was: "How do you like Malaysia?" He said it was beautiful place and the food was absolutely fabulous.

However, he also mentioned that Malaysians were, at that time, too preoccupied with race. He went on to say that he has not been to any other country where the people were more pre-occupied with race than Malaysia.

Given the context of the 1960s, where the prevailing mood of the nation was that of racial politics and inequalities, this is not a surprise. However, it would seem that not much has changed in the last 40 years. Race is still an issue. It is still an issue in education, politics and even our day-to-day life.

We may have lived together for a long time, but yet we hardly know each other and each other's cultures. It would seem that ignorance is a recipe for hatred, and hatred breeds extremism.

We have to learn to live together. We know that there are Muslims and Christians fighting each other in Indonesia, but we should also know that they are also closely working together in solidarity in Palestine.

Hatred knows no bounds and does not respect the sanctity of life. Reading some letters in your column sometimes leads me to believe that there is a prevailing ignorance of each other in Malaysia. The polemic seems to be that of "us against them". This cannot be allowed to prevail, or we will be heading towards disaster.

We need to learn how to disagree yet still respect one another. However, it would seem that this is not what the politicians would want, for this is not good political strategy to win elections.