The words “terrorist attack” and “Malaysia” are not often heard in the same sentence. For all the tension we have seen over the past year between the various ethnic groups in the country, Malaysia remains fairly free of a terrorist presence. Our country is used more as a transit point than as a target for terror cells in the region.

But all that has changed in the wake of a leaked police memo detailing possible Islamic State (IS) terrorist attacks in Kuala Lumpur and Sabah.

On Saturday, news broke that the police had arrested an IS suicide bomber at an LRT station. The man, a 28-year old insurance agent who had travelled from Terengganu under the orders of his Syria-based superior, is also suspected of having flown IS flags in several states as a warning to the authorities. The police also announced that three other militants had been arrested at KLIA earlier in the week after they returned from Turkey, where they were detained for trying to sneak into Syria.

This almost unreal situation comes in the wake of a deadly series of bombings in Jakarta, perpetrated in part by the IS in collaboration with other extremist groups in the region. The IS traditionally rejects other terror groups unless they subscribe to its ideology, making this collaborative effort a point of concern for counter-terrorism efforts in the region.

The police must be commended for their efforts against the IS infection. But they are merely treating the symptoms of the disease. Indeed, they can only do so much to stop the spread of the ideology.

It is we, the rakyat, who must ensure that we are untouched by this new plague, and the key to doing so is to discredit the IS ideology. To do that we have to be united as a nation; we have to insist on living in harmony despite our cultural differences. The more divided and segmented a society becomes, the easier it is for fringe elements to rise up and cause a disturbance in the status quo, and to gather into their fold the like-minded and those who could be persuaded. The IS can slip through the cracks to recruit the disenfranchised.

Stopping that starts with us. It means respecting each other on issues of race and religion. It means being willing to accept differences and to compromise. Without acceptance and compromise, ideologies like that of the IS will bubble to the surface and demand their day in the sun because all that resentment has to go somewhere. We have to have better understanding of each other, from both the cultural and religious standpoints.

Whatever happens from this point on, whether or not there is an attack, we will need to unite as Malaysians across religion and race. We have to recognise that it is only through togetherness and harmony that we can truly move forward against abhorrent ideologies.