With reference to the letter from Dr Syed Alwi Ahmad and those from others who are now involved in an interesting debate on apostasy, please allow me to point out something that has been missed out by many.

Why does the Holy Quran and the Hadith often sound very harsh to modern, Western-educated minds which have been trained and taught to ask questions instead of swallowing everything handed down without question?

The reason is very simple. We tend to forget the situation in Arabia in the times before the advent of Islam. These were the times of the Dark Ages.

The Arab tribes then had absolutely no idea of God. They were nomadic people with absolutely no reverence for one's life or property. Killing was rampant, even for the most simplest of disagreements.

Thus when God sent His Messenger, He sent down a harsh set of rules about what one could do and what one couldn't

The believers were those who heard the Holy Prophet and followed him while the non-believers were those who didn't hear him. The apostates were those who heard, believed, then, stopped believing. For the last group, the prescribed punishment was death.

In today's world, no society behaves the way the Arabs of the Dark Ages behaved. Nobody's community is as uncivilised as they were then. How then can we prescribe similar sentences for different eras?

We also forget, that Islam was meant to bring light to these Arab tribes, who in spite of the Torah and the Gospel, did not change their superstitious and barbaric ways.

The Holy Prophet was sent specifically to bring the Arab tribes out of their misery. Many of the laws were specific for that period and people, because of their evil ways. One must understand that Islam then spread to other lands far from its origins by men who traveled far and wide with it.

The Holy Prophet has said: 'To spend more time in learning is better than spending more time in praying; the support of religion is abstinence. It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night, than to pray the whole night'.

When the Holy Prophet himself has given so much importance to the acquiring of knowledge, man - with so much more knowledge today - should try to kill less and love more, whatever the reason.

Let God and God alone judge in matters where so much controversy exists.