LETTER | A friend asked me about the issue of “special guidelines” for Muslims visiting or attending events at non-Muslim houses of worship.

I did not answer him directly, but I told him about my personal upbringing as a young Malay and a Muslim boy in my hometown in the late sixties and early seventies.

I was brought up in a kampong-class family, who are pious Muslims.

I was enrolled in a Malay school from standard one until standard six and was later admitted to a multi-racial and co-education English medium school in the same town.

My father worked with a colonial British tin mining company and so did my elder brother.

My brother used to buy English newspapers and some English magazines, and I was introduced to The Straits Times, Reader's Digest, and Beano & Dandy cartoon magazines as early as the early sixties.

My early exposure to multi-language, multi-racial, and multi-religious surroundings taught me to be quite open to reality in life as a Malaysian in a multi-national society.

I remember one day, before Thaipusam, an Indian Catholic classmate told us that he was going to carry the kavadi during Thaipusam that year.

Most of us, including our English teacher who was a Christian, were quite sceptical about his holy intention, because he was quite a naughty and playful student then, and we thought he was joking.

So we, our teacher and classmates of all races and religions, decided to attend Thaipusam when he was supposed to do the kavadi-carrying ceremony at the temple.

We told him we would give him moral support, to which he was delighted.

We went into the temple’s premises with some Muslim, Buddhist, and Sikh friends from our class to witness his kavadi-carrying ritual.

We were so relieved and happy to watch him complete his holy ritual without any difficulties or any untoward incidents as we were worried about before that.

The moral of the story is that his friends of all races and religions who attended the Thaipusam celebration in the temple in person, witnessing the whole ritual, none of us were converted into Hindus after that!

My Catholic friend who performed the ritual is still a Catholic and the teacher who accompanied us on the pretext of giving moral support was still a Christian till his last days, and we are all still Muslims, Buddhists, and Sikhs today.

Then there was an exemplary incident in my life when a friend of mine, a Chinese girl who suggested that we study our syllabus subjects at her house.

Her father was a taxi driver and her mother was a homemaker.

Her mother planned to buy an F&N bottled drink and some biscuits from a Malay shop nearby as she was worried that I would not drink from a non-Muslim house, but I told her frankly “You can just prepare coffee or tea for me, auntie”.

Today, we are still happily friends, a typical Malay grandfather and a typical Chinese grandmother, exchanging Happy Chinese New Year and Selamat Hari Raya greetings every year!

I have proven one very important thing in life.

Nobody can change, pressure, or force you into believing any religion without your own inner personal faith, or “taqwa”, that has been bestowed spiritually in you as your religion.

We do not need any guidelines to visit any church, temple, or any religious premises simply because we have very strong ties and faith in our own religion from the day we embraced it.

And to suggest that there should be guidelines for non-Muslims to participate or to attend Muslim functions or activities, is also not very right, because they too after more than 50 years of Merdeka, are very knowledgeable and and very well versed with all religions in this country.

May God bless us all.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.