When Christmas comes a calling, I never fail to revisit one of the greatest stories ever told – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. To me, who is no stranger to the religious and spiritual texts of the Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching, the New Testament and the Quran, the Dickens novel approaches spiritual writing as strong and endearing as the parables in the great books of mankind.
For many Malaysians, reading the “other religious books” is taboo and discouraged because it would supposedly bring great confusion or worse, might “convert” one to a faith other than the one into which he was born.