COMMENT The Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) has struck a nerve when its public relations officer Zainun Zakaria said that the church in Taman Medan, Petaling Jaya did not apply for a permit to convert a commercial building into a religious place of worship.

In the first place, Zainun’s statement is not only misleading but shows her incompetence in disseminating public information to the media, being the public relations officer of MBPJ.

Now, if she is being professional about it, she would immediately release another statement to retract her first statement.

Such a grave mistake could be very damaging for both her reputation as a public relations practitioner and the reputation of the organisation that she represents.

Yesterday morning, the state Committee on Non-Islamic Affairs (Hesi) had met to discuss the issue of the removal of the cross at a church in Taman Medan.

The MBPJ councillors who attended the meeting, Peter Chong and FK Tang, revealed that since 2008, churches and other places of worship were allowed the freedom to operate in commercial premises or offices without the need of application for permits.

Current position

According to a press statement by Elizabeth Wong, which followed after the meeting, the committee only required a notification that a church has decided to operate from the building.   

“This is based on the principle that Article 11 of the federal constitution (which) embodies freedom of worship,” Wong said in a statement .

For this reason, the MBPJ has no longer any jurisdiction over the question of whether a permit had been issued to the church in Taman Medan.

The same committee had also instructed the church pastor to return the cross to its original position in order to stop any precedence for any mob rule by politically-aligned extremists. The pastor had apparently decided to remove the cross for the sake of his congregation’s safety as the mob was behaving in an unruly manner outside the church, while the church service was on.

The police arrived only much later, meaning that they too had not been adequately informed about the demonstration, and this despite the involvement of one Abdullah Abu Bakar, who is the elder brother to the current inspector-general of police.

The IGP had cleared the demonstrators of sedition, raising ire amongst the public, including politicians like Saifuddin Abdullah and activists such as Eric Paulsen and cartoonist Zulkiflee Anwar Ul-haque (or better known as Zunar).

However, IGP Khalid Abu Bakar’s statement was immediately shot down by the Home Minister, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, who said that the demonstration in front of the church and the forced removal of the cross was considered seditious.

Forcing a place of worship to remove the cross on the ground that it challenges Islam is seen as an insult and an act of desecration to the Christian community in Malaysia.

The 50-odd demonstrators had since received the strongest condemnation from all quarters for their actions.

This is the first time that the voices of Malaysians are being heard loud and clear despite a number of similar episodes in the past. It has also drawn ire from the Group of 25 eminent Malays, who had urged the severest punishment to be meted out against the protesters.

Suffering in silence

Since the early 80s, after Dr Mahathir Mohamad took over the premiership of this country, it was not only the Indonesian Alkitab that was banned.

Churches were pushed from one corner to another, because the government had not provided enough religious lands for people of other faith, other than Islam. As I understand it, under the Country and Town Planning Act, developers have to allocate a piece of land irrespective of whether it is a Chinese or Indian majority area, for the use of either a surau, a madrasah or a mosque.

However, for the non-Muslim places of worship, this depends on the developers’ own discretion. As a result, any piece of land allocated for non-Muslims is immediately grabbed by the different religious communities.

Most churches in the eighties had to meet in rented homes in the housing estates. They were later forced out of the private homes based on complaints received from the neighbours. These churches had to move to commercial premises.

Having to pay hefty rentals for the premises, they faced the tough challenge of applying for a permit to convert the building for religious use. Because churches do not subscribe to paying bribes to speed up the process, often the process of even converting the building took years.

Meanwhile, they had no choice but to take the risk and meet at the premises. Sometimes, I wonder why these religious organisations are being treated as though they are operating illegal massage parlours or gambling dens from these premises.

In the past, where there was no permit, the church could be forced to relocate. This issue had been brought up time and again by Christian umbrella organisations such as the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship and the Council of Churches Malaysia, but there is still no solution at the national level.

When Pakatan Rakyat came to power in 2008 in three states, this longstanding issue was discussed at great lengths in the light of the federal constitution.

Selangorians have the Hesi committee to thank because it was after the committee was set up to look into issues relating to non-Muslim faiths that a new ruling was issued which has since helped to solve the thorny issues faced by the religious organisations using these premises.

What happened last Sunday, and the response that we received from the MBPJ, certainly opens up a pandora’s box that unless politics is divorced from the true practice of one’s faith, be it Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism or even Islam, things can only get worse.

It is time for politicians from both sides of the political pendulum to work together to ensure that the rights of the non-Muslim communities are being protected, and provided for by the government of the day. This is after all the spirit of the federal constitution which binds us together as fellow Malaysians.

Intervention by the most senior people in government, in particular, the prime minister and his deputy, to nip the problem at the bud is necessary to prevent another incident of religious intolerance like what happened last Sunday to occur again. The 50-odd demonstrators should face the long arms of the law, without fear or favour.

Malaysians at large should stand up against such extremism and show that we can no longer tolerate anyone who practices such religious and political bigotry.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.