I am a graduate from a university in Malaysia and I have forged great relationships and bonds with my brothers and sisters from different religion, including Islam. In them, I have learned a great deal and have great respect for the individuals they all are.

Having been a part of many inter-religious discussions and activities, I have learned a great deal about the different religions that exist in Malaysia. I feel great sense of admiration and respect as I approach or enter holy places like mosques, churches and temples.

I have come to understand the strong faith and belief that supports each act and ritual performed during the Muslim prayer and I, personally, approach it with a sense of reverence. I could completely imagine, understand and accept a Muslim's reaction if their holy place was treated with disrespect, their faith dishonoured and their ritual mistreated or ridiculed. It is only logical for them to react with anger and hurt if their faith was

I read with great disappointment and hurt the article, published in Al-Islam , entailing the (mis)-actions of some of my dear brothers of Islam in a church recently. In an interesting attempt to uncover false allegations, members of the Islam community, whom I generally respect, entered the church, mistreated the Catholic Christians' ritual of receiving communion, dishonoured their faith in that communion and caused great hurt to Catholic Christians all over the world.

I am lost for words by the insensitive actions of the fellow members of my community. As a respectable media, I do truly hope that Al-Islam puts a lot of thought before executing its actions and remembers to respect the beliefs of others.

Essentially, Islam is a beautiful religion. I really hope that insensitive and cruel actions like this are not repeated by Al-Islam which will continue to smear the originally beautiful Islam and cause the build-up of more resentment between people of different religions which is not what the world needs today.

Respect is one of the core values that is important for community living and I am very sure Muslims believe in that as well.

It was even more interesting to see the responses of police force and media to this issue. It was reported in The Star that the two journalists charged with 'causing disharmony' may face two to five years of jail sentence. Such 'seriousness' to the offence. I feel that if a different party had committed such an act to a different community, without question they would have been arrested under the ISA and yet we see a different reaction to this situation.

Most of the times, we do not really know what actions of the arrested persons could have threatened national security and yet in this case, where the offence committed by the Al-Islam reporters are clearly capable of causing racial or religious disharmony, the offenders are simply facing a possibility of two to five years in jail.

I begin to wonder if the government are taking its citizens for fools.