How does Karen Leong's selective examples ('Violent and intolerant secularists', Aug 4) of oppressive 'secular' regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Robespierre prove anything or advance any argument in the context of the present discourse in Malaysia whether the present 'secular' state of government should be replaced by PAS' theocratic state?

Though these regimes were secular, their oppressive character was not due to the secular nature of the state but due to their other ideologies. For example, Hitler's ideology was fascist premised on the supremacy of the Germanic race.

Stalin, Mao's and Robespierre's states were cruel not because they were secular but because they were conceived from violent revolutions to rid off the capitalistic and aristocratic ruling classes.

Why does the writer take as an example Robespierre's France during the French Revolution and not the modern secular state of France today to argue her point?

Citing historical examples of the cruelty of 'secular' states long ago simply is not an argument when extreme ideologies and revolutionary conditions other than secularity of their governments caused their cruelty. In those times, no one had even heard of such a thing as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948).

Religions teach compassion and charity but history testifies with many examples of how religions have been abused by fanatics to perpetrate cruelty and hate.

This is because religious discourses are often structured in stark absolute terms - that if one's own religion is true, the others' must be false.

This is why a union of state power and religious authority and power should be avoided at all costs. It is because it is a very potent combination leading to absolute power. (According to Lord Acton's time-honoured adage, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely).

The checks and balances are simply not there within the system of theocratic states. Oppression sets in when a religious fanatic or demagogue ascends to power.

That is how the courts work, the truth being determined by adversarial arguments by opposing lawyers.

Not so in a theocratic state where the clerics in power claim monopoly of absolute truths based on their interpretation of God's words - and the purpose of such a theocratic state is to further and implement the laws and intentions of God as interpreted by the religious authority (clerics and scholars).

It is so obvious that such a state is the very opposite of a democratic state for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the state is to serve God and not the people. Parliament, as we understand it, being a body of elected representatives to make laws for the people, is redundant because in a theocratic state in which God's laws reign, the religious cleric and scholars will promulgate them simply because they claim to understand such laws better than lay representatives of the people.

In spite of these anti-democratic features, a theocratic state based on one religion can probably gain more acceptance if all the people believe in one religion upon which such a state will be structured.

How does such a theocratic state become feasible in a multi-religious Malaysian society that is not homogenous in religious or cultural values?

Imagine the government based on laws structured on one religious sect is led at some point of time later by a fanatically religious leader.

Where will minorities of other religious sects, agnostics and atheists stand in terms of their rights?

In a multi-religious society amongst whose members include agnostics and atheists (with rights as well) the fairest system is a secular government and not a government structured upon any particular religious sect.

A state can promote a particular religion and yet remain a secular state!

For a secular state and government simply means that whilst the government can still promote a particular dominant religion, the running of the government itself and the content of its laws keep out and are not connected with or controlled by religion or the religious authority of any particular sect.

Such neutrality in governance "levels the playing field", which is fair since if people of different faiths and also no faiths equally submit themselves to governance of the state authority, then it is only fair that the state authority, like a referee in a football game, desists and refrains from taking any particular religious side, as far as laws and governance go.

To the writer and people like Lee Pusan ('Secularists, too, should be more open-minded', July 31), I would say that they have totally misconceived the DAP and PAS contest as one between the self-righteousness of atheist versus that of religious persons or religious values versus 'secular' (translated to mean 'atheistic') values .

These are hardly the issues. The issue revolves round the contest as to what should be the appropriate vision and structure of state and its laws in a society of different religions and values.

I would contend that in respect of multi racial multi cultural and multi religious society like Malaysia, a 'secular' state is the fairest and that which accords most tolerance and respect to its citizens of different religious beliefs and values.

And it is unfortunate that because of the opposition to the Barisan Nasional's policies, some people are inclined to jump from the pot into the frying pan without understanding the implications of what the issue is at stake.