I wish to refer to Helen Ang's letter Googling terrorism .

Amongst those whose tendency towards Islamophobia is high are those who are extremely compulsive in gulping down everything they discover from the World Wide Web. The wealth of data available on the World Wide Web has created a new type of compulsive behaviour regarding excessive web-surfing and database searches.

These dial-up political analysts don't really have the intellectual methodology necessary to filter, verify and challenge any incoming ideas and information. The complacency in searching for the truth, added with racist, prejudicial stereotypes towards the Muslims, will only give independent research-based journalism in Malaysia a distrustful image.

Ang's writing on the Palestinian issue is filled with falsehood, smoothly blended with bits and pieces of untruthful rhetoric such that readers will find facts as fiction and vice versa. Just like the typical dial-up political analyst, Ang was just parroting whatever she reads from one side of the river. While she kept blaming the Muslims for being unjust towards the Jews pertaining to the Palestine-Zionist conflict, she fell in the same oasis. A widely known Zionist propaganda mouthpiece, Memri is well-known to spin-doctor anti-Zionism critiques into anti-Semitism hullabaloo.

Ang accused the Muslims for being biased towards the issue while ignoring the predicament of the Jewish people. Is she aware that the pinnacle of peaceful Jewish civilisation and centralisation of the Jewish religious authority were recorded during the Islamic Andalus era? Who would deny the scholastic standing of Moses Ben Maimon in the Jewish history?

Had he been born in England, Paris or Rome, he would have been persecuted like any other Jew during their Diaspora in Europe. He would have been one of the victims of the pogroms perpetuated by the Russians. Quoting what Rabbi Yezroel Weiss said, 'Jewish people never enjoyed a prosperous and harmony life like they used to enjoy under the Muslims rules'.

Indeed, the Jews suffered enormously under the Catholic kingdoms. Read the 'Covenant of Omar' which is still being preserved by both the Jerusalem Muslims and Christians. It was clearly stated that the Romans agreed to hand over Jerusalem to the Muslims provided that the Jews must be excluded.

Can Ang prove any mass-scale anti-Jewish pogroms that happened in Muslim countries? Please remember the root of the Ashkenazi Jews in Khazar, where they were converted to Judaism through a Jewish scholar living in Andalus by the name of Hasadi Ibn Shaprut.

I am suggesting Ang broaden her mind. As a writer, she must challenge everything that she reads critically and intellectually. Don't only depend on the Internet, and don't hear only one side of the story. I would be more than willing to coach her voluntarily in order for her to understand the conflict from its very beginning. Out there lies historical facts that cannot be denied and accepted realities that we cannot reject. But again, I'm skeptical whether she will accept this offer, merely because I'm a Muslim!