In response to Zulqarnain Lukmain's 'Gays, Islam and the Constitution' (July 19), Dr Farish A Noor ('Reaching out - gays and Islam', July 9) did not assert that homosexuality was approved or acceptable in Islam (or for that matter Christianity or other religions).

Farish merely asserted that by the fact that gays were "actual lived realities" within Islamic communities, they should, by universalistic principles of compassion or divine mercy, not be ostracised at the outer margins forever without recourse to medical assistance (if they had HIV/aids) or social rehabilitation or moral redemption.

If homosexuality is a genetic aberration to which they were born helpless with, gays should not be personally condemned or blamed.

If homosexuality were not a genetic disorder, then it must be a matter of unnatural habit or choice or a combination of circumstances (for example imprisonment and prison sub-culture) that his own free will has led to.

If it is his free will that leads him to this unnatural act, it is only his free will that will be able to make a homosexual remain as he is or lead him out of the predicament.

Now I assume that a homosexual faced with social ostracism can take either of the two courses - struggles to do away with this 'deviance' or evinces no intention or desire of doing so.

In either cases, what should be the intelligent and forward-looking response that we, the religious and morally 'upright' segment of the population, adopt in relation to the gay?

In case of the first choice, he needs sympathy and support, which includes psychological treatment or medical treatment if he has HIV. In the second, he needs advice and positive influence to diffuse or negate his unnatural intention.

In simple terms, we help and guide his exercise of freewill to the path of normality.

Hold it as self evident the following truths:

1) If homosexuality is deviant and unnatural to the morally and religiously upright section of the population, then this section has a moral duty to either prevent its occurrences (if that were possible) or reduce/diminish these unnatural habits by seeking at least to cure them. This latter course cannot be carried out if homosexuals are viewed unsympathetically and driven underground and marginalised.

2) To sympathise and extend help to those who have 'fallen' does not mean that from a religious or moral standpoint that we accept and condone, much less approve homosexuality! I argue that the more we disapprove the deviance, the more we help those in it to come back to the natural state! (This distinction between condemnation of unnatural acts and helping, out of compassion, those who are victims of these acts are consistent and must be borne in mind). After all, to be compassionate is also a competing value urged upon us by the Almighty boundless in His mercy.

3) If homosexuality is forever condemned to thrive in the shadows of the fringes, what is there to say that it may not proliferate and undermine in due course society's moral fabric and physical health by recruiting more members or spreading of HIV respectively? This means that even from the point of view of society's self preservation, it is imperative that gays be not ostracised so that they could surface and receive assistance in whatever form, medical, moral support and counselling or whatever.

Zulqarnain's citation of Article 3(1) of the Federal Constitution that it provides for Islam to be the religion of the Federation is, in the premises of (1), (2) and (3) above, totally irrelevant and cannot support the continued ostracism of gays.

Article 3(1) merely states that Islam is the official religion of the Federation having regard, as Zulqarnain said, to the cultural roots prior to the Reid Commission.

Therefore whilst it is imperative that the country of which Islam is the official religion takes a position to morally condemn homosexuality as an unnatural and heinous activity, how to deal in a practical way with such a prohibited activity in the manner that benefits society and improves morals at the fringes remains a separate issue.

As a progressive and modern Islamic country touted by our prime minister, we should not only condemn - that is the easiest thing to do - but take one step further, as suggested by Farish, and move forward to combat and help reduce the extent of such deviance.

Helping supporting and counseling gays in order to rehabilitate as many of them as possible to the mainstream of natural lives is the enlightened way. (We are engaged in a cause to reduce sins!) Ostracism will only aggravate that deviance and conduce the silent proliferation of this sin.