COMMENT As a teacher and a professional journalist who is as old as Malaysia is, I am frightened by what is happening in my country.

Having spent the better part of my life in a plural society, I am sensitive to what is offensive and what is not.

As one who has exercised the right to vote, I expect the government to do its utmost to protect my simple privileges accorded to me in the constitution.

And when I write, or script news items, I use common sense to be as objective as possible. Unlike medicine or the legal profession where one has to take rigid tests and pass examinations, journalists have a higher benchmark that is tougher to examine.

It is called conscience. Of course doctors, lawyers and other professionals have to have it, but for journalism, it is the only benchmark.

That is the professional test that I have put into my article and pieces to ensure that minimum standards are met. But like everybody else, I am subjective. And because I am subjective, I am also sensitive when discussing race, religion, politics and members of the opposite sex.

I have seen and experienced the best and the worst a plural society has to offer to the rest of the world.

The latest incident where two Molotov cocktails were thrown into a church must stand out as the nadir of moments of our half a century as an independent nation.

What could the perpetrators gain by this act of attempted destruction of a house of worship?

These are acts of cowardice aimed at causing maximum damage to the very fabric of a plural society.

But what is even more frightening is the silence by the government as the events started boiling over that culminated in this Molotov attack.

The toxic cocktail of race baiting and religion bashing was allowed to go on unabated for an unprecedented length of time (and still going on) is nothing less than shocking.

The finger pointing has already started, the rumour mills are now working overtime, theories as to who did it will be spun fast and quick and the blame will fall on everybody for a myriad of reasons.

NGOs, politicians and individuals claiming to champion various parochial causes are seemly allowed to go carry on with their provocative and seditious (legal or otherwise) statements with impunity.

It says a lot. It says a lot more about what the players of this dangerous game expect the outcome to be.

It can only be explosive.

Is this where we have arrived after 56 years of independence?

One binding thread

In my years at school, and I studied at a mission school, I had friends who were Chinese, Malays and Indians and none of us ever thought of one another as belonging to a particular race or religion.

We were just boys and the 'enemy' were the members of the opposite sex.

What May 13 did was to make us more sensitive to one another's religious proclivities, traditions, habits, rituals and taboos.

But we recovered soon, got on with life, some went to colleges and universities, made a life and some a name for themselves in the various professions that they chose.

But there was one singular thread that bound us all together. No, much to the chagrin of the powers that be, it was not tolerance.

Tolerance means that we put up with one another ... sometimes with difficulty. We were genuinely 'in like' with one another.

None of us imposed our faiths or religious peculiarities on the other fellow. We knew instinctively what was right and wrong in the presence of the others.

We respected each other.

History has clearly shown that religion has often been linked directly to the worst examples of human behaviour ever imagined.

It is trite, but sadly true, to say that more wars have been waged, more people killed, and these days more evil perpetrated in the name of religion than by any other institutional force in human history.

In school, we studied about the wars that brought the world almost the brink of total destruction.

No, that could never happen in our Malaysia ... we were not that stupid, we knew.

We had a passion for one another's companionship, we read voraciously, we went to our libraries, we played games together, football, cricket and hockey.

When the forward asked the ball to be passed, we passed it without looking at his colour but at the goal scoring chance he was in.

No. We were not tolerant. There was no need to be. Because we knew one another well. We knew what was taboo.

Today, you even have to have courses on socio-cultural do's and don'ts in our society.

I can't seem to understand why.

The best course, during the genesis of our nation, was social intercourse with the other fellow's community, family and friends.

But suddenly, now my friends, my generation, seem to be powerless against the indiscriminate acts of desecration that are occurring with numbing frequency in our country.

We seem to be spiralling down towards a violent and menacing future.

Crossing the Rubicon

Silence imputes sanction by the powers-that-be. It gives the licence to say and do whatever seems right. And it empowers all and sundry to have extreme views.

If substantive action is not done, and not done fast, we will be crossing the Rubicon soon and we will be facing the prospect dealing with the demons that have been released by official inaction and subtle sanction.

As Einstein said: "Insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results."

Over the last five years, these acts of desecration seem to be repeating themselves too frequently for kosher comfort.

Can't we just stop this insanity?

We have an enormous task of dealing with the huge toll that the myriad of hikes have imposed on the people.

Instead of dealing with these problems, we seem hell-bent on short-circuiting all that was built up by our forefathers and forfeiting a better tomorrow for our children's children.

Or are we going to keep silent and allow the endgame outcome envisaged by some end-times political prophets?


CORGITO ERGO SUM is a practising journalist and teaches the profession.