Faithless misstep

But to absorb the Malay culture is one thing; to be absorbed into the Malay world is another. As a young man, my father fell in love with a Malay girl but because he refused to become a Muslim, had to give her up and leave his kampong forever, thus cutting himself off from the “mainland” of his childhood. Hearing the story when I was a child, I learned that religion is an ocean that divides the world into islands.

- Chuah Guat Eng, author of Echoes of Silence

Sometimes it is hard to explain my being agnostic. One misstep, and I would forever be a cynic.