A nation under religious siege Dialogues are the only way forward to promote religious understanding amongst the people of varying faiths. The hasty measure of man taking up arms against a fellow human being who happen to reach out to God in a different manner to his has caused great bloodshed and tragedy. Violence only begets more violence. An eye for an eye makes the entire world go blind.

The current Prime Minister is a great proponent of dialogues. He has impressively called for dialogues to end conflicts in the Middle East, Darfur and any other region in the world that is under strife. Dialogues for the entire world seem a reasonable and logical solution as far as he is concerned.

But dialogues are not for Malaysians apparently. When citizens of this country call for inter-faith dialogues to create bridges and strengthen understanding between peoples of different faiths, the Prime Minister remains silent, unwilling to agree to such a basic request. The fact that the longer he waits, the spirit of nationhood becomes weaker amongst the 27 million Malaysians is apparently irrelevant.

This vacuous type of leadership is gradually being exposed to the world, following the recent cancellation of an international Muslim-Christian dialogue session which was also supposed to include key religous figures from both sides including the Archbishop of England. Such a summit would have boosted Malaysia's international credentials and position as a moderate, modern country which happens to have a Muslim majority population.

The question that begs to be asked; who is really running the country? The Prime Minister or an unseen hand with a myopic, narrow view of the world?  ¶ 5:17 PM