I'm surprised that Leow Mei Chern has somehow imputed to me a connection between air hijacking and the alleged would-be perpetrators' genes. Pray quote the sentence in which I made that link.

Next, she labels what she sees as the association of (extremist) Islamists with terrorism (or more specifically blowing up airplanes) as my uniquely prejudiced worldview. As she has mentioned using the Net search engine in preparing her letter, may I request that she Google 'Islamic terrorists' and 'Buddhist terrorists'. The exact phrases register 711,000 and 1,910 hits respectively. What does she make of that discrepancy?

Since Pew (which I cited) did not poll Malaysians, I'd like to refer to the recent Merdeka Centre survey as interpreted by Dr Patricia Martinez who summarised: "It is significant that negativity defines Malaysian Muslim attitudes [83.5% of Malaysian Muslims in peninsular Malaysia have a negative attitude towards the US] towards what constitutes "the West", and this finding is in consonance with other global surveys on Muslim attitudes, such as those conducted by the Pew Research Center."

Leow further writes: "There are reasons why terrorism thrives (and I seriously don't think it has to do with one's genes). One important factor we should not ignore is how it does so in an environment that threatens one's identity." To extend her hypothesis tangentially, and since she avers not to be a Muslim, I would observe that if she were ever to marry a Malay man in our 'Islamic state' environment, I shall be pleased for her if her identity as a non-Muslim remains unthreatened ... should she choose not to convert, that is.

She also refers to Gary Younge of the left-wing Guardian newspaper who wrote: "Fundamentalists of all kinds only thrive when their communities feel besieged." In that event, Leow should credit (as I did) the peaceful approach and conciliatory outlook of Bolehland's moderate minorities who are increasingly and similarly besieged. Our Made-in-Malaysia 'training module' should be exported to the liberal UK.

Lastly, to answer Leow's original query as to the purpose of my article, I was, in a nutshell, pointing out that collateral damage from terrorism which deliberately target civilians - in this instance, passengers in the wrong plane at the wrong time - indicates not only the perversion of their ideology (not 'genes') but also that any Malaysian could fall an unwitting victim.

While urban terrorism is understandably beyond our rational understanding, we must also wonder about the people - in our local context - who support or silently acquiesce to the discordant actions.

Let's pick up on the aforementioned Merdeka survey again: "Finally, in terms of suicide bombing - 11.6% (of our own Muslim population) chose 'Syahid' or martyr, and a high percentage, 24.8%, chose the 'don't know' response (which because of its significant size, can be interpreted as respondents not being willing to state their point of view.)"

My own poser is: Why does a sizeable proportion of fellow Malaysians see as martyrs those who choose to snatch the lives of as many innocents commuters or travellers (soft targets) as they can with as much damage as they can inflict?

And why does a full quarter of Malaysian respondents not condemn this killing and maiming of an international civilian community who have nothing to do with 'American aggression' or that country's foreign policy?