*dusts off my blog*

I wish my blog was coming out of hibernation for something happy. I wish my blog was coming out of hibernation for something happy. But instead, the reason my blog’s coming out of hibernation is because I need to express my sorrow at the state of my country.

For those of you who don’t know the background story, quite awhile ago, the Catholic weekly Herald was banned from using the word ‘Allah’ in their publications. The reason given was that it might “confuse” Muslims, and that ‘Allah’ should only be used for the Islamic religion. There was an appeal, and justice was declared (or so we thought), when the High Court declared that the Herald was free to use the world Allah in their publications. An appeal was filed, and the Herald was told not to use the word ‘Allah’ whilst pending the results of the appeal

At midnight, this happened…

A church in Desa Melawati was firebombed! According to some of the newspaper articles, there was an eyewitness who stated that three or four people on motorbikes stopped in front of the church. They broke the glass panels on the ground floor, poured some flammable liquid and set off the fire.

What is happening to our country?? I dare say that it’s only because of a small group of people that they are resorting to these attacks, but it is going to have a huge effect in the already unstable situation.

What makes me even sadder is how our the two ‘official’ online newspaper sites are reporting the news. The news of the firebombing was all over, even on the front page of The Straits Times. On The Star, the only mention of the issue was: “PM has pledged to resolve ‘Allah’ issue”. On the NST, it was even worse: “No stopping protests over ‘Allah’ issue: PM”.

What happened to the peoples’ rights to know? Why should the newspapers only report certain things, and leave out other important issues? As you can see, I’m full of questions, and not many answers. The only thing that is certain is that we all have to pray hard for the country, and wisdom for our leaders so that they will know how to act…

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