Arbibi Ashoy, in his letter, asks 'So, when we hear of people supposedly deciding to leave the religion, one is inclined to ask, why?'

Having been inducted into being politically correct when dealing with Muslims in Malaysia where very often we see them taking license to publicly declare their religion and to proudly sound out how perfect it is and its elevated position vis a vis other religions, it is really quite difficult to write out any number of reasons that we may have come across for why there may be Muslims who decide to leave their religion.

As a Malaysian, Ashoy would have probably been accustomed to seeing many conversions from Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and whatever else to Islam. Most of them, he would also agree, would have arisen not out of conviction but out of the 'necessity' imposed out of love for the opposite sex.

It would seem like it is a given that the non-Muslim is the one who would have to convert. Let me assure Ashoy that in a majority of such cases, these conversions do cause heartache to the families of the non-Muslims and in many cases, alienating them forever too.

But I suppose over the years this is one factor and facet of living in Malaysia that most of us have become accustomed to and increasingly, the despair and disappointment when one sees a child leaving their religion to adopt Islam because of marriage becomes less and less heart-breaking.

Of course, I should add that when it does happen in our families, our own upbringing, religion and faith enables us to be civil about it and in most cases enables us to continue to love and accept that member of the family together with his or her new found spouse or partner.

The question I would like to ask is what he do if it happened the other way around and a child of a Muslim family decided to leave Islam? Can he be civil about it?