BG's 'Nationalistic Islam as preached by Umno is worse' (Nov 21) and Hamidris' 'Islam rejects oppressive and discriminative nationalism' (Nov 23) have clearly, perhaps proven, that not all Malaysians are into this "carbon-copy of the 19th century secular (and possibly anti-religion and atheistic)" nationalism as propagated by one of the biggest (and conservative) racial party in this country.

Strangely, for a country that shows itself to the outside as "democratic" and "multiracial", our country's [nationalist] politician shows a different attitude.

Nonetheless, it is true Islam rejects the ideology but history, ironically, has shown that religion interacts with nationalism one too many times.

The Vatican's signed agreement with the Nazis pre-World War II, and that of the Arab nationalism and Indian nationalism, uses [or infuses] itself with religion to justify [or holify] its political or terror acts.

Also, nationalism - contrary to what our education system has us believe of multiracial unity against colonialism - is no more than past local politicians wanting to 'develop' their own respective race.

More precisely, nationalists (whether Malay, Chinese, Indian, Kadazan, etc.) struggle for no more than the unity of their race, and to meet their own power-grabbing ends.

In the case of 'national unity', one could see it is the respective race 'leading' the others, in turn, provoking other nationalists wanting to also 'lead' not just their race but the whole within the restrictive border of the nation-state of Malaysia.

This led to antagonism among themselves and political-wrangling, to get a share of power within this nation-state. When this went to a higher level of annoyance, reflected by the media (their loudspeakers), their weaknesses are exposed and their opponents exploit this, prompting their leader, the one that 'unites' them, to call for "national unity".

To add to that, I quite disagree with Hamidris that "Muslims should live within the system of modern nation-states, any political sentiment and ideology based on the elevation of any exclusivist nation or race ought to be rejected".

Because, isn't this country of ours, (its political and economic system) based on the concept of nation-state? As the Parliament has shown, our politicians cannot simply abandon their political sentiment and ideology based on the elevation of any exclusivist nation or race since that's what they are practising now. Even other countries [Muslim or not] cannot simply reject that since that's precisely what has brought them to the position of power that they're enjoying.

Even PAS and Keadilan are not free of this sort of sentiment, PAS' idea of a Muslim state and Keadilan's 'liberalism' have much to be questioned. The burgeoning of greater numbers of the middle class and existence of the poor both demand not mere rights nor power but decision-making of their own lives, in questioning the 'development' of this nation-state which continues 'stripping' us of our wealth (environment, resources, freedom, etc).

And they profess themselves as "democratic" and "Muslims".