Introduce comparative religious studies.

It is obvious that the protests of the Taman Medan church are unacceptable. Instead of protecting the sanctity of Islam, the protesters have tarnished the image of this religion. However, I believe the majority of Muslims and even non-Muslims in this country already know that their act is not representing the Islamic teaching.

However, this incident is not the first of its kind in this country. In fact, we have experienced many unreasonable actions that have tried to be justified in the name of protection of religion. Failing to cope with this problem not only threatens our unity, but also ruins our vision to achieve the status of a developed nation by 2020. The higher-income or physical development that we enjoy means nothing if citizens fail to show their respect for each other.

While some people ask for action to be taken, especially under the sedition act, against those who want to create disharmony between different followers, I believe our religious education approach should be upgraded. Having said that, I do not mean that the current system either formal or informal is unsuccessful since many prominent Muslim scholars has been born, but we need to adapt to the current reality.

For example, every Muslim should know how to treat non-Muslims in our multiracial and multi-religious country. Apart from knowing how to socialize them in daily activities based on Islamic teaching, it is necessary to understand their beliefs particularly the sensitive issue from their religious perspective. Hence, the best solution is to introduce the subject of comparative religion in schools.

During my school day, I was not interested in religious study since the system was based on memorizing which I was not good at. However, when I continued my matriculation at International Islamic university of Malaysia, we were introduced to the religion in Malaysia subject. Honestly, it inspired me and most of my classmates to study hard in the Islamic field as we understood the real function of religion in human life. Moreover, the subject also made us more moderate in dealing with non-Muslim.

After graduated from Jordan in Islamic studies, I got a chance to be a temporary teacher in government school. Usually, when the period of the Islamic education subject come around, the non-Muslim students will leave the class. However, since I changed my approach by sharing the issue based on various religious teaching, it attracted most of the students to take part in discussion. Surprisingly, the non-Muslim students asked to join my class as they wanted to share their opinion as well.

Currently, TV Al-Hijrah airs dialog harmony in which concept is sharing ideas about current issues by different religious scholars ; Islam, Christian, Hindu and Buddhist. Without provocation or pushing one the truth, the program is, to me the best step to create and promote the harmonic relationship between multi-faith people.