PATRICK Saw is a confused man. Yesterday, officials from the Publications and Quranic Text Division of the Home Ministry raided his stall and seized T-shirts, some of them depicting kung-fu legend Bruce Lee and China's Mao Zedong in mainly tongue-in-cheek fashion.

One had Mao portrayed as "Mickey Maos", but Saw was told by the head of the division that the ministry had given a directive to clamp down on anything deemed to promote communism. In all, they took 83 T-shirts that they cited as "obscene and contain communism elements".

This was the third visit by officials of the department, the first being in 2005 and the second in 2007.

Saw is confused that despite all the raids, the division has not given any guidelines on what he could and could not do.

Adding to his bewilderment is his claim that the officer who carried out the raid could not speak English and yet could decide what was obscene and contained communist elements.

Surely, Bruce Lee does not promote the idealism of communism.

The bigger question is: are such guidelines necessary in the first place?

The making and selling of such T-shirts, which is more to humour than anything else, is nothing new. You find them in every country, in every language and people use their creative skills to draw other people's attention and make them interested enough to buy one. Tourists are usually the target.

There is no denying that some T-shirts are downright vulgar, obscene or controversial.

When George W. Bush was US President, he had more than his fair share of this type of T-shirts. He was perhaps one of the, if not the, least popular presidents.

But then again no US president has been spared this. But the US is a mature democracy, where people stretch freedom of expression to the limit, and having such T-shirts is just that, a form of expression that everyone is entitled to.

The raid yesterday raises this issue: Does wearing a T-shirt of a leader of another country, who is communist or a terrorist, for that matter, make you one? T-shirts of Cuban guerilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Osama bin Laden and drug-tainted reggae singer Bob Marley are all very popular and many people wear them, some not even knowing who these people are.

Seriously, where is our sense of humour? Is there always some ulterior motive for the things we say or do?

We pride ourselves as a developing country with first world infrastructure and a highly educated population. Yet something is missing.

These are hard economic times where people are struggling to make ends meet and some are even losing jobs. The present political climate in the country doesn't give you much comfort, too.

The last thing we need now is the authorities being overzealous in such matters.

We are mature enough to make the right decisions and choices. People like Saw are using their creative talents to add some colour to our lives. We may not agree with what they say but there is nothing like a good laugh.

Laughter, they say, is the best medicine.

God knows we need more of it than ever to just get by nowadays.