religious freedom with religious restrictions = ??

by now many of you would have been aware of the fifth annual international religious freedom report 2003 released by the US bureau of democracy, human rights and labour.

in this report the US government accused malaysia as favouring certain religion. which got our PM annoyed. he said the report was not true as malaysia did practise religious freedom when ..

“we even celebrate deepavali together. the government which is led by muslims will join the celebrations. not too long from now we will celebrate christmas, we will hold more open house. what they (state department) are saying is all not true.”
i find it strange that he (and also other ministers) like to say stuffs like the above – that all races celebrate/join in all religious festival, and there are open house everytime a different religion’s festival come, and people of all faith will be there.

this, don’t they understand is not religious freedom. this is just religious integration. (am i right there?). sure we are free to choose our religion, free to practise our religions… but there are restrictions here and there, so what freedom? where religions are concerned, it is so obvious that the government has not been fair and favour a certain religion, just like the report stated. for example usually the building of mosques uses public funds while building of churches, temples does not utilise public funds. and even with using private funds for building places of worship other than mosques, there are so many restrictions slapped on us e.g the famous case of the catholic church in shah alam – the building must not be higher than the mosque building and so on.

and if there are religious freedom, why does the government not allow christianity or buddhism or hindu programms on air on the radio or TV?

sadly, i feel we will never have complete 100% religious freedom in our country.