In reference to to Susan Loone's 'Me, myself and my race' (Oct 29), I am a doctor and I think we need to classify ourselves according to race for a lot of good reasons and not be scared of being treated differently.

In medicine for example, the race tells us about the culture, lifestyle, dietary pattern, epidemiological pattern of certain diseases, the genetic make-up that belongs to a certain race and which is correlated with pathological conditions. There is obviously no intention to differentiate treatment based on race, but the information does provide us with a lot of clues for better diagnosis.

Similarly in other countries such as America, the term Spanish Americans, Caucasian Americans and African Americans have been used to indicate different races that have their own characteristic of an illness or pathology.

In the hospital ward or clinic, we can tell the patient's race from their skin colour but when we conduct research, we need to know their race for analysis.

I believe that God created the different races for a purpose, otherwise He should have let only one human race on earth - but imagine how boring that would be. The question of unity and equal rights depends on the wisdom and fairness of humans. There must be something to unite us all...but not the abolition of our racial identities.

What has wreaked havoc today is the unjust nationalism and factionalism attitudes of our prominent leaders in setting the national policy. Please do not think that it is synonymous with the teachings of Islam, on the contrary it is exactly the opposite.