I read with informed hilarity the musings of some of your regular columnists and a host of other letter-to-the-editor articles. Steve Oh ([#1]Outdated, dehumanising practice[/#], April 6) questions the cutting off hands as a form of punishment in Islamic law, but then I cannot be angry at a non-Muslim for criticising my religion, when malaysiakini columnists Dina Zaman and Dr M Bakri Musa, both Muslims, are not far off.

I said hilarious because if the intent was to ridicule then these writers hit the mark. To criticise and rock the cynics at one's dogmas in a forum such as one provided by malaysiakini portrays a lack of a certain kind of integrity.

The rules of Hudud and Islamic laws have been termed barbaric and uncivilised from quarters more established than the likes of Steve Oh, but no one can deny the fact that for the Muslims they are dogmas and commandments, as much as the Hajj and prayers are.

One can criticise these rulings only if one steps out from the platform of faith itself. If one is no longer a Muslim, one is not only free to criticise, but to sneer at that said religion and anything to do with its teachings, and thus in this spirit Steve Oh's opinion is forgiven if it can be regarded as a scholarly one meant to be discussed.

But the question is: Can the editors of malaysiakini allow this daily to be a platform for the bombardment of one faith by the members of another? And let defenders of the said faith be allowed to rebut with rationales and justifications in subsequent issues?

Can I as a Muslim, for example, ridicule right here in these pages the asininity of burying clothes and paper houses and paper money and limousines together with the dead just because it is required of ancestor worship of one's religion, or laugh at another faith that teaches that the universe's creator is blue in colour, has eight hands and has a face like an elephant's? Do I have the right to mention how inherently stupid it is for one religion to revere a man who cursed a fig-tree because it didn't bear any figs, when in actual fact it wasn't the time yet to bear the said fruit? Am I allowed to express here how ruffled my feathers are at the way the 'mother of god' was admonished by his son in the incident of the wedding at Canaa?

Steve Oh glorifies the teachings of the god that asks only those without sin to cast the first stone, thereby highlighting the kind of god that is needed in this oh-so compassionless world. But Order, if left to just Love alone, has the strange behaviour of having a mind of its own. Perhaps Steve should also mention that that very same teaching also promulgates the "turning of the other cheek" whenever your enemy smites you in one. No sane man can deny the fact that the present Judeo-Christian socio-political World Order is based on the very non-practice of such teachings, as can be seen by the politically-correct bombardments of Iraq and methodical oppression of the Palestinian people.

But more strangely puzzling, and perhaps more sickeningly insulting is when this daily promotes the likes of remote-based physician-cum-columnist extraordinaire M Bakri Musa ([#2]Religious schools merely brain-wasting indoctrination centres[/#], March 31) and pseudo-journalist Dina Zaman ([#3]Infidels in the guise of Muslims[/#], April 5) to produce articles that ridicule their own religion.

To these two, wearing the tudung is the lifestyle of the unhip. Islamic students are stupid, their diplomas, useless, and religious syllabi in madrasahs and kulliahs are 'intellectually-challenged'. I weep, and don't have the slightest doubt that the prophet will too if he reads that about the thing which he was ready to sacrifice his whole life for.

Dina and Bakri perhaps belong to that class of the new Super Malay Muslim, one who, as shown by a TV advertisement, closes his eyes in delirium while listening to Bizet's Symphonie Fantastique and gets so, oh, irritated when his ecstasy is interrupted by the baton falling onto the floor. In truth, the said Super Malays still use a cebok (sic) for bathing and know diddly-squat about classical music beyond being able to pronounce 'Tchaikovsky' correctly.

Actually, what is this thing about writing with flair about your own faith for those who aren't from it? Is the gift of gab (or the pen) that God has given us only used towards writing against the faith of your own people to a non-Muslim audience, in the hope that applause and nods can come from them?

I am reminded of the sitcom Friends whereby each gift of gab, each flair of language, each harmonious construction of linguistic japeries have only one intent in mind: to discredit and put down others. And therein lies the whole humour of that sitcom.

Why have none of our writers argued the fact that the Hudud laws, however barbaric they may be, are still God's laws that He wants to be implemented? Why have they not highlighted the fact that in the absence of such laws, more crimes and murders are committed within any 10-minute span in Chicago or New York than an entire 10 years in Saudi Arabia?

Isn't it more barbaric to allow murders and crimes committed by the minute - nay, by the second - just because an existing deterrent set of laws is deemed 'barbaric', never mind by whose standard?

Eva Ibrahim ([#4]Let's not cut off anyone's hand[/#], April 5) then tries to bring home the point the gory nature of the amputation laws by referring to a photograph. I wonder if she would still feel as disgusted if those same hands belong to one who had raped her daughter or slit the throat of her husband.

Perhaps we should also portray the multitudinous pictures of mutilations, decapitations, morgues filled with body bags of murder victims, rape victims, which had resulted from the absence of strong deterrent laws. And I wonder then who is it that is more barbaric: inventors of laws that allow serial killers like Andrei Chikatillo or Jeffery Dahmer to munch spleens for afternoon tea, or God?

I long for the day when a Buddhist journalist writes about the fallacies of her own Lamas of Tibet or a Catholic writer sneers at the uncomely habits of El Paso nuns, but I am almost sure that day will never come. It won't, Dina and Bakri, because they love their religion more than you love yours. They defend as much as you sneer.

Muslim intellectuals should understand their own religion first and be proud to tell the world of its teachings, not join in the foray of those who spring at the first opportunity to discredit it. As Omar Khayyam once said:

"There was once a time when this fortress seek to reflect

the wheeling of the heavens

How many princes fell on their knees before its gates

And now, on the bastion,

a wild dove is poised."

Khayyam would turn in his grave knowing how a couple of Muslim writers craving for recognition at the expense of his own faith are poised there too.

Cheers.