Catholic Bishop Dr Paul Tan Chee Ing said he is ckeptical of the Health Ministry's finding that only one in 100 Malaysians suffers from schizophrenia because of the penchant for fomenting the illness at the national level.

 

"You take the Islamic State's recruits in Malaysia and the Special Branch finding that these conscripts have been told to wipe out the non-Muslims - a threat like that is dismissed by the inspector general of police as so much talk with no follow-through yet in action," said the head of the Catholic Church in the Malacca-Johor diocese as preamble for the point he sought to make.

 

"If a threat like that is found to exist on the part of assorted non-Muslims vis-à-vis Muslims, you could be sure that it would be the cause for a flurry of arrests and charges against the offending parties - and properly so," he said in elaboration.

 

"But when a credible threat is discovered to exist the other way, it is dismissed and derided as ‘cakap cakap saja’ [idle talk]," queried the bishop.

 

"Pray, tell me, that the recent finding of the Health Ministry that only one in a hundred Malaysians is schizophrenic is not an underestimation!" wondered the Jesuit-trained prelate.

 

Non-Muslims seen as vermin                                                                

In the last week, a deputy director of the Special Branch is on record as saying that Malaysian conscripts to the cause of the Islamic State have been indoctrinated to view non-Muslims as enemies who must be wiped out, while a deputy health minister has warned that one in 100 Malaysians are now known to suffer from schizophrenia.

 

"Both findings come as no surprise to me," offered Bishop Paul.

 

"From the behaviour of the jihadis of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, it is clear that they view non-Muslims as vermin to be eradicated, while a pervasive culture of double standards in Malaysia has fostered schizophrenia among the people whose incidence, I fear, is being underestimated," he asserted.

 

He said a culture of double standards makes for an unreal world in which what is truly dangerous is not seen as so and what is illusory is seen a real.

 

"We have to throw away our sleepwalker's insulation from reality," cautioned Bishop Paul.