KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 — University of Singapore professor Syed Farid Alatas today said that public discourse on different variants of Islam must follow proper decorum.

Farid said even debates among Muslims and Non-Muslims were done in a polite manner in the past.

"For example, if there is a debate between Muslims and Christians, the Muslims would present the ideas of the Christians from the books of the Christians and then criticise. After that, they would wait for the response from the Christians and so on and so forth.

"There is an adab (manners) to debate which follows a certain decorum. They were polite — not rude — and honest.

"However, what is happening in Malaysia the past few years has been a kind of debate that we can describe as biadap (rude),” he said at a public forum discussing extremism and the division in the Muslim world at Universiti Malaya here today.

Farid said this became evident when religious figures often criticised without proper context or research.

"When Shi’ism was criticised, it was not a proper intellectual criticism. We can have a proper intellectual criticism of Shi’ism and in fact, for centuries, Sunnis and Shiites have been criticising each other. Criticising their aqidah (principles), their theology, but they been having polite debates.

"But in Malaysia, certain so-called ulama, have been creating a false picture of Shi’ism and then attacking the preacher without properly discussing the books of the Shiites, and without properly discussing with the Shiites themselves,” he said.

"You have the same thing when you open YouTube. You find extremist Shiites scholars in the Middle East who create a false image of Sunni Islam and attack that image,” said Farid.

Ultimately, Farid hopes that more intellectual public discourse is done with the appropriate manner.

"We need to have a culture in Malaysia that engages in discourse in a polite manner, follows the rules and debates of discussion in Islamic tradition,” he told the forum.

Farid added that he hopes Muslims from all schools of thought will be united on the basis of being against all forms of extremism.