YOURSAY 'I don't hear modern day Egyptian Muslims going around destroying all their infidel ancient cultural heritage. Don't tell me they are less Muslim than the Muslim in Malaysia?'

Beyond Candi 11, can we rewrite history?

Senior: Rewrite history? It's being done in school textbooks. Yap Ah Loy did not found Kuala Lumpur, Hang Tuah and gang never existed, Parameswara is now a Malay prince, etc. etc. History belongs to the victors, in this case Umno Baru.

Voice: You can claim innocence of the destroyed historic ruins in Kedah, but you can't run away from responsibility. This damaged inflicted on candi 11 should be considered as the first and the last unfortunate incident.

Any further damage, and the ruling government will be held as destroyers of their own national treasure that should be protected at all costs.

Ng Hiak Hing Present day Hindu temples are being destroyed one after another, and now they are going after the significance of Bujang Valley. Why this is so, your guess is as good as mine.

Jean Pierre: I am sure in everyone's mind, if the ancient site had been of Islamic significance, it would not have been callously given up for destruction. Thus there is the argument that the whole fiasco smacks of religious bias as well.

Open Minded: Certain religious thinking is devoid of the human intellect needed to appreciate and reserve humanity's rich heritage, irrespective of its cultural, religious or racial background. One has to remember that the our lives today is strongly influenced by people from other nations who had travelled far and wide to spread their knowledge and civilisation to help us to improve our way of life.

Dalvik: There are two issues here. First this nation, ignorant of its multi-religious citizens, chose to go all out for Islam as the object of supremacy, instead of what is written in constitution, that is we are a secular nation.

Second, this was driven by a particular party, who is getting more racist year by year, which has also gone all out to protect cronies and justify its wrongdoings. They are ignorant of other parties that have helped them to form Barisan Nasional, which have helped them to win the elections.

Yes, ignorant is the keyword here. But can all the rakyat finally wake up from the naive dream, that BN has not only corrupted this nation but deviates further from its original idealism when we gained independence from the British?

The hope lies with all the rakyat, who should choose not to be ignorant in the next election

Proarte: To the author K Arumugam: In Malaysia, there is a not so subtle pervasive view that has been inculcated by Umno and PAS that other races and religions are 'tolerated' by Muslims and they self righteously pat themselves on the back for this act of 'great accommodation'.

So do not expect them to state that the destruction of candi 11 is un-Islamic. The best they might offer is to reconstruct the candi as an act of 'toleration' but it will be never one of celebration of our shared and diverse history.

After all, the self righteous party of Islam PAS at the time regarded the international outcry over the destruction of Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddha statues by the Taliban as an unwarranted reaction over 'useless bits of stone '.

Islam has always been used by conquerors to dominate and to erase indigenous cultural history and identity. Acts of 'cultural cleansing' are given a moral and Islamic justification by the subjugators.

Consequently Islam is widely regarded as intolerant, coercive, insulting and unjust.

Jesse: Paying lip service seems to be the norm. Our historical jewels are slowly being destroyed by idiotic and misguided notions of Malay and Islamic supremacy. What can one expect of ignorant fools like the Taliban who destroyed the Buddhist statues viewed as a threat to their religion? Is the religion so weak that it cannot withstand some passive historical relic?

Wg321: I don't hear modern day Egyptian Muslims going around destroying all their infidel ancient cultural heritage. Don't tell me they are less Muslim than the Muslim in Malaysia? They even relocated an ancient infidel Abu Simbel temple that contained the statue of Ramses the Great when they built the Aswan Dam on the Nile river.

They don't behave like the Taliban. The Indonesians are also very proud of their own non Muslim infidel cultural heritage. They don't allow property developers to destroy them. According to Malaysian history books, the Malay race did not exist before Parameswara.

Chandran Siva: The BN government is always afraid of the truth, and the least bothered about Indian domination in this soil a few centuries ago.

Changenow: In Hinduism, the two words 'conversion' and 'tolerance' are never there in its practices. First of all there is no such thing as conversion in Hinduism. It allows a Hindu to practice other and any number of religions simultaneously or separately.

Hinduism allows one to even drop its practice altogether if the individual finds another practice more comfortable, and allows him to return at any time. It never allows condemnation of another practice as it regards others as part of its own practices.

That's why there was never any problem with other religious practices when Parameswara, a Chola descendent, introduced Islam to the Malays. The Bujang Valley survived destruction in the early days of Islam in Malaya as there was no rivalry between the two.

Hinduism treats other religions at par. So there is no place in it for the words 'toleration of other religions'. The Kedah Sultanate exhibition in Alor Star depicts Hindu origins.

Mohamad Abdul Malik: The point is that in Malaysia developers are king. This is not the first time their 'couldn't be bothered' attitude shows. We see public land given to developers. Matured golf courses suddenly 'given' to developers and sometimes land alienated for public use suddenly 'owned' by the private sector.

And there were many more such cases. I do not think this is much of an issue of trying to erase history whatsoever. It's just more of a 'couldn't care' attitude. So what if the Malays were once Buddhists or Hindus? It does not make one less of a Muslim. As long as corruption is endemic in this sector this attitude of the powers that be will not change. It's a classic case of money speaks.

Mavelikara: If the views expressed here are understood and appreciated by every Malaysian, especially those in authority, Malaysia would be a better place. Right now there is a lot of slogan shouting, and scant attention is paid to urgent national issues.

Angel: Religion says we should speak the truth. Moral education tells the student to speak the truth. However Umno leaders do not speak the truth. The truth is Umno was dead in 1987 and Umno now is Umno Baru.

Proof: Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Ismail, Adul Razak, Hussein Onn and all the other early leaders are not former members of Umno Baru.

This what we call rewriting history to hoodwink the Malays.

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