I just read that recently you and a friend visited one of the churches that I belong to. I was surprised that you had to do it in disguise.

You should have told the Catholic community there that you were coming and we would have given you a grand welcome.

Such was the experience of the MP for Shah Alam, Khalid Abdul Samad from PAS, who was given a standing ovation when he visited and had a dialogue with the parishioners of the Church of the Divine Mercy in Shah Alam last year.

Some time back, I attended mass in a Catholic church in Petaling Jaya and was moved by the presence of a group of Muslim students and a Muslim professor who had taken them there as part of their “exposure programme”.

None of them were converted.

You see we are not an underground church nor do we function in a clandestine manner. Our hearts are on the holy and not on the hideous. We even pray for Najib, though I feel we do not pray enough for the opposition.

We also pray for people like you who do more harm than good to your religion of peace, tolerance and compassion.

What takes place in Catholic churches is highlighted in our in-house newspaper which was quite unknown until the government decided to prevent it from using the word 'Allah'.

Alas, the Herald should thank the government for making it so well-known today.

It is a pity that you took so much trouble to “investigate” under guise what is going on in Catholic churches or that “Muslim teenagers were being converted to Christianity every Sunday”.

You should have gone directly to the Special Branch, which sends it officers to visit our churches occasionally. Surely they will be able to tell you that you would be only wasting your time!

If indeed the Catholic Church has the conversion of Muslims as its hidden agenda, it would surely have started converting hundreds or even thousands of impressionable young Muslims through its Catholic Mission schools which have existed for about 100 years.

But no such thing has ever happened.

The Muslim classmates and friends that I had in St Michael’s Ipoh are still good and respected Muslims today, and such was their appreciation and respect for the La Salle Brothers that they made sure that their children in turn would attend a La Salle school or a convent!

Sadly, your disrespect knew no bounds. You chose to abandon all human and religious decency with impunity as a journalist and a Muslim. Under pretense of being a Catholic, you participated in the church service and even partook of the Holy Communion (a white and sacred wafer) strictly meant only for Catholics.

You consumed the white wafer which Catholics hold as very sacred and treat with utmost reverence, and both of you spat out the remnants, photographed it and published the picture in an article entitled 'Tinjaun Al Islam Dalam Gereja: Mencari Kesahihan Remaja Murtad' which was published in the May 2009 issue of the Al Islam magazine.

I shudder to think of what could happen if the reverse took place - if for instance two reporters from the Herald were to enter a mosque disguised as Muslims, partake of the rituals and desecrate something which the congregation considers very sacred.

I can imagine Khairy Jamaluddin leading a group of Umno Youth thugs and burning the effigy of the Catholic archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, and Zulkifli Nordin rousing up a mob and invading the Herald’s office and demanding that it be shut down for good; or certain Muslim NGOs insisting that the two journalists be jailed under the ISA!

It all points to the reality of you being a cog in Umno’s machine - a political party that has politicised religion for its survival by creating unfounded insecurities amongst Muslims and a distrust of other religions.

Meanwhile it dominates, dictates, decides and even defines what non-Muslims can and cannot discuss, deliberate on, and display in print.

Najib’s 1Malaysia is really Malaysia in one big mess!