The "special debate" on the sacrosanct usage of "Allah" reflects the historical split between Muslims and 'infidels'. And, beyond the world of Islam, it's Jews and Gentiles, Christians and 'pagans'. It's a dualistic world where the 'saved' live side by side with the 'unsaved', who theologically would be judged accordingly by the Almighty. Will the religious twain ever twine?

I am reminded of many ardent dialogues in Australia between Christians, Jews and Muslims. The last dialogue, which nearly turned into an all-out verbal fracas, albeit in a controlled environment, was on Aug 1 last year during the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. The Special Broadcasting Services brought together Lebanese and Jewish Australians for an in-studio forum to see if it was possible for them to talk to each other. The forum degenerated with both sides spewing self-justifications, historicising the conflict, and reducing each other into narrow ideological categories.

Then on Aug 27, an Islamist political group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, was publicly condemned for distributing graphic pamphlets in Sydney and various Muslim-dominant suburbs calling for the destruction of Israel in a holy war. Politicians then called for the group to be outlawed, just as it was outlawed in Germany and parts of Central Asia.

Our inclination to think in polarised terms is clearest in public debates about race and religion. For example, in the weeks leading up to the recent New South Wales state election on March 24. The leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Party, Fred Nile, a church minister, had called for a 10-year moratorium on Muslim immigration into Australia pending further study of its implications. Instead, he proposed that Muslim immigrants be replaced with "persecuted Christians from the Middle East".

Nile's media adviser reportedly resigned on the eve of the election because he was offended by the anti- Muslim focus of the campaign (The Sun Herald, April 8, 2007). But, Nile's policy obviously appealed to a large section of the conservative Christian community. He was re-elected to the NSW Legislative Council, a seat he has held since 1981.

Knee-jerk political reaction

The national daily, The Australian (March 12) reported Nile as saying: "There has been no serious study of the potential effects upon Australia of more than 300,000 Muslims who are already here. Australians deserve a breathing space so the situation can be carefully assessed before Islamic immigration can be allowed to resume. (Meanwhile) Australia should extend a welcoming hand to many thousands of persecuted Christians who are presently displaced or at risk in the Middle East."

Gordon Moyes, a member of the NSW Legislative Council and deputy president of CDP disagreed with Nile's ideology of exclusion. He clarified that Nile's call was not CDP's official policy.

Moyes did not deny that minority groups "can create huge problems with existing populations". Restricting Muslim immigration, he said, was a knee-jerk political reaction, which ignored the complex probable causes of social unrest. Here's where the problem lies with the ideology of exclusion. It is often framed by selective perception of events, thus the practice of selective factualising. Probabilities of Muslims or other religious and ethnic groups - being direct causes of social unrest are essentially reduced to absolute certainties.

Essentially, Moyes said that rather than "ban entire groups of people on the basis of ethnicity or religion", as Nile proposed, the more constructive step was to work out solutions to social unrest where they existed (that is, where Muslims live in parts of Sydney and Melbourne).

Indeed, it is silly to correlate the predisposition for violence to being a Muslim, and for doing good things to being a Christian. Social unrest takes many forms and cuts across religious and cultural boundaries. It is fundamentally racist to attribute a religious and ethnic descriptor to a crime, which is caused by many factors from economics and social deprivation to politics and mental illness. Thus, it is fundamentally self-defeating to differentiate Malaysians in any public discourse and documentations from job applications to MyKad renewals - by religion and race.

Arguably, our perceptions, biases and values evolve from the selective literature we've read, lessons handed down from parents and kin, our limited experience with other cultures - and as in some societies like ours, from our socio-economic location decided at birth. In talking about our beliefs and values it's more productive to avoid making claims as it often happens in inter-faith dialogue - on what's absolutely right and true based on peddling selective 'facts' than rationally reflecting on the context of issues and events.

We should be sceptical of religious groups and self-proclaimed theologians who reason on the basis of claimed absolute accuracy of their 'facts' of history, while relegating the views of their opponents to be counter-factual. The victor, as it's said, writes the history. One historical 'fact' can easily by rebutted by another. Evidence and counter-evidence, perceptive Christian views of Islam, and vice versa, are easily found on the internet. It's a matter of searching the 'evidence' to support your argument. But, productive dialogue seldom occurs in a tit-for-tat encounter, often mistakenly regarded as an intellectual exchange.

Religious zealots

It's said the Western media have perpetuated the causal link between Islam and terrorism, Muslims and social unrest. The fact is racial (religious) segregation is strongest where religious dogma is most entrenched. Racial supremacists often also happen to be religious zealots, be they Christian, Jew or Muslim. Recall that the last bastion of Christian racism was in apartheid South Africa. Existing Islamic racism is in Iran.

Christian crusaders and Muslim jihadists both have killed and maimed in the name of a holy war. One's for Christ. The other's for Muhammad. Both answer to a believed divine calling. George W Bush believes God's still on his side in his war in Iraq, just as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes Allah's on his.

If there's a poll on racial attitudes conducted today, it would certainly be enlightening to see if Christians and Muslims could be more racially prejudiced than non-Christians or non-Muslims. Religious orthodoxy tends to parallel religious dogma. This in turn tends to shape a narrow ethnocentric and religio-centric view of the world. If my theory is right, you can roughly guess the poll findings on racial and religious attitudes if it's held in your community today.

What needs to happen apart from forging a middle ground in the polarised debates about Islam and Christianity is for our clergy to return to the basic teaching of loving thy neighbour according to a benevolent God who created all peoples and apportioned the colour accordingly I suppose, not to segregate but to show the beauty of diversity.

Journalists should foster this line of public talk, and take a stand when it comes to issues of social injustice, racism and discrimination of all forms. The question is on what spiritual grounds do journalists stand on? A close Muslim friend of mine said, "I believe that justice is divine and it should know no racial or religious divide. That's one of the key reasons in my believing in God."

As a Christian, I can't agree more.