When it comes to a matter of religious sensitivities, it is most important for all parties to take into consideration the consequences of their actions!
People who go build religious structures without the proper permits and approvals from the authorities are only putting innocent lifes in mortal danger in the resulting damage to both the structures and the worshippers in the future when action is taken against them!
The nation witnessed this tragedy take place recently when the ‘Nine Emperor Gods’ Taoist temple built illegally by the Chinese Taoists at Jalan Maju, Seberang Perai, Penang get demolished by 50 of the Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai Enforcement team backed by 30 officers of the Royal Malaysian Police last Friday, the 17th of November,2006!
The Sun2Surf reports about this latest sad episode in our nation’s history and highlights the double standards being openly practiced by the local governments of Malaysia!
This Taoist temple is just one of many other illegally built religious structures that have been pulled down and destroyed by the authorities in recent times.
Mosques, Surau’s, Hindu temples, Taoists temples , etcetera have bit the dust because their builders forgot to go get the relevant approvals from the Land and Building Departments of the area in the first place.
Some fail to even get ownership of the land and simply built such places as they please thinking they can get away with it!
Irresponsible and criminal indeed because it is just a matter of time before the authorities will come with their bulldozers and enforcement team to obliterate the building and reclaim the government land.
We have seen how such buildings get razed by the local authorities and the resulting clash between the particular faith’s followers and the local council enforcement squad and the FRU or the PDRM break out and the unnecessary bloodshed take place!
Kg Rawa Hindu temple-Masjid incident saw Hindus and Muslims clash because some smart alecs failed to get approvals of the land owner and went ahead to build a Hindu temple that was only 20 to 30 metres away from a legitimate masjid @ The Masjid Jamek Kampong Rawa in Jalan Patani, Penang.
Indian Hindu Drug peddlars used the illegal temple as a front for their activities and started enlarging a small Hindu family shrine of one of the squatter villagers to become a fully fledged Hindu temple and even brought in Hindu priests from Chennai, India to consecrate the structure. Their intention being nothing but to camouflage their drug trade from the authorities.
The Muslims living in the area got incensed for the Hindu priests started to ring their bells and coincided with every time of prayer of the Muslims frequenting the masjid nearby.
Villagers started to be inconvenienced by the drug pushers who started to cause problems for them by riding their noisy motorcycles to and fro from the illegal Hindu temple in odd hours, further adding fuel to the fire raging in the villagers hearts.
People started losing their properties as a result of drug addicts converging to the drug pusher’s haunt behind the facade of the temple and many started to go lodge police reports about their loss.
The growing tensions finally erupted into an all out clash between the Muslims and the Hindus who were fanned by the spreading of malicious incitive news spread through the internet and phone sms’s.
I was one of the Muslims who defended the masjid and eventually, to ease the growing tensions of all the people, the authorities had no choice but to demolish the illegal temple. As a Muslim, naturally I rallied to the cause of defending my faith’s centre of worship. I believe that everyone will feel the same when it concerns their own places of worship.
The legality of raising the buildings however take precedence over all other aspects of the rights to own and have our individual places of worships and we need to respect that.
We saw mosques being demolished in Kg.Bujal, Terengganu because the Muslims who raised it failed to get the building permits in the first place. I still have a VCD about the whole tragedy which I bought at the day market outside of Masjid Subang, PJ.
We now see the latest incident at the Taoist temple, Jalan Maju, Seberang Perai as a vicious reminder to all those who want to raise whatever religious buildings to never forget the most basic of rules in the land-official approval and permit to build from the local authorities!
Unfortunately, we also see the glaring double standards being practiced by them in ‘closing both eyes’ to Istana Impian built illegally by the infamous ex Councillor of the Klang Municipal Council, the Klang UMNO Chief, the ‘Gucci Sunglasses’ sporting Dato Zakaria Mat Deros!
Why the hell is his illegal palace still left standing?
Is his illegal palace so holy and untouchable that no one dares touch it ? What kind of justice system do we have in this Bolehland?
The Selangor Menteri Besar Khir Toyo is so obviously practicing double standards and giving all kinds of ‘cock and bull’ excuses in not wanting to order the demolition of that glaring palace rising up above all the other village houses that it makes us want to puke in disgust at such corruption and abuse of power remaining there in Klang as a sign of how in our nation, there lives and breathes an ever growing dragon of ‘Do as I say ; Don’t Do as I Do’ evil so manifest in such likes of being the YAB Menteri Besar this and that!
May Almighty Allah give them their dues! Ameen.
As for the persons responsible in raising any of the religious places of worship here in Malaysia, regardless whether you are a Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Sikh or whatever else, please remember that what you do illegally today, will see a harvest of loss of life and severe harm to limbs of your fellow worshippers in the very near future in Bolehland because here, corrupt politicians and those with super duper connections can and have got away with all kinds of criminal activities but we, the ordinary citizens will be arrested, handcuffed and beaten to a pulp if we ever try to challenge the !#$^*#! calling the shots!
To the people of Penang, I ask that you remain rational and try to work out things the legal way first before taking up those sticks and bash each other senseless!
Do we want to kill and murder anyone just because some smart alec hiding in his airconditioned plush office in MPSP gave the order to start demolition of your ‘illegal’ place of worship?
Use your commonsense and do not do anything today that will come bite your ass tomorrow!
O Allah! Spare us from the foolishness of those who are in power today in this Bolehland! Amin!
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Can we have some evidence that the Kampung Rawa temple is an astroturf structure for drugs? I’m hard pressed to find such evidence for this…
Even a quik search on the internet has failed to turn up any evidence.
Mucho’s gracias…
Well young man,
The media were ordered to play down and withhold info about what went on at the place.
I was there during the incident and all these info was being related to me by one of the affected Malay villagers.
I got it all on my tape recorder.
I even had recorded the incident albeit only on my Sony Walkman.
I didn’t have a digital camera back then as I do now.
Problem is when I divorced and moved down to KL, I left all those collections of mine in Penang.
The newspapers were ordered not to print about the Kg Rawa incident for fear of adding to the rising tensions hence even the internet doesn’t hold much info because the ISA was hanging over the head of whoever posted anything about it back then.
So, just live with it.If I come across anything, I’ll email you.
Adios!
Let’s put the religous aspect aside, I agree if the building plans had not gone through the proper channels, action should be taken. But then, bear in mind the temple has been there for 20 over years. It is insensitive to just come and pull down the building when there were supposedly talks scheduled to go on the following week.
The flaw was in the plan and I believe not the issue of landrights. (There has been conflicting reports, but I heard the land did belonged to the temple)
If the govt is intent on showing a good example, bungalow on hilltops should go first to show nobody is above the law.
That’s my humble opinion.
Cheers
well my friend, the Kg Rawa incident was really ugly.Malays from other states started coming in busloads to desacrate Hindu temples in Penang!Little Malay kids, which i believe were incited by their parents,threw stones at a Hindu temple in Bagan Jermal after the Kg Rawa thing!Oh,in another separate incident, a few Malay youths hacked religious statues off the roof of the same Hindu temple!This is ugly!
Now his tory is repeating itself.I know the temple messed up somewhere on the legal status of the temple, but come on.. why don’t the council allow the temple committee be allowed to remove the sacred objects first?
That’s what i call disrespect.The Gods are benevolent enough to forgive them,but I’m a Taoist who’s no sage!This painful memories will continue to haunt many non-Muslims.
This ‘stupid’ incident will fuel more mistrust among the Muslims and the nons.
Malaysia was scarred with 13th May.Next Kg Rawa. Then demolishing temples without removing objects holy to devotees.
I don’t want to believe Islam is behind all these,but some ceramahs that i’ve heard blared from the loud speakers prove otherwise. Speakers denounce and belittle non-Muslim’s form of spiritual practice and cited the story of a Nabi that destroyed ‘berhala’.
Please assure me that non-Muslims in Malaysia can live without being presecuted anymore… can you? I’m very disappointed.
Brother Liew,
Malaysians need to know that all these incidents are done by nationalists and not in the name of Islam per se.
The 13th May riots was based on ethnic dissatisfactions fueled by a volatile atmosphere charged by political instigations.
The Kg Rawa incident was actually more of religious strife added on by communal conflict between the Malay villagers there with those who enlarged the illegal Hindu temple ; again fuelled by ethnic differences.
The 9 Emperor Gods Taoist temple is a case of the MPSP enforcement team following their orders.
The latest case is the demolition of Kg Berembang in Hulu Kelang, Ampang, Selangor by MPAJ Enforcement team.
80 over Malay families are living like refugees in tents and canvas shelters , suffering like hell having lost all their homes and belongings.
What more can I say? Go watch the video clip at http://www.tvPAS.com
If they can do that to fellow Malays and fellow Muslims, the rest don’t have a chance in hell to escape the local government clearance of squatter areas!