Attack on Madrasah students

Shanmugam has appealed to the public to be calm and let the police investigate this case and not to speculate. Three Madrasah female students were beaten by a Singaporean man.  The man has been arrested. His brother, Mohammad Johan Koh had apologized for the incident and revealed that he attacker had some mental problem and had been admitted to IMH before.

Let’s hope this is a looney case and not a case of Islamophobia. It would be very serious if Islamophobia has come out in the open. The authority must be highly sensitive to this trend and make sure it does not surface in our fragile multiracial and multi religious society. We cannot allow such incidents to happen and any signs of it popping out must be slammed with a sledgehammer.

Every Singaporean has a duty and responsibility to make sure inter racial relationship is not undermined or agitated by irresponsible individuals.  It would be good that civic minded citizens could step in when such infringements happened in public places. Unfortunately when every other person is a foreigner, things would get more difficult as there are very few Singaporeans to do anything to keep things in order. Everyone would be looking at everyone and foreigners are less likely to interfere. This is the price to pay for having so many foreigners here to dilute our identity and existence.

Where are the Singaporeans to stand up and say this is my country and we are all Singaporeans?

PS. In the media there were hints that this attacker is a bit loony. But loony or not, what he had done is very serious to our racial and religious harmony.  Time to call for maxing out the punishment.