00:00Recent complaints over houses of worship allegedly encroaching on public or private land or built without proper approval have reignited
00:08a delicate national conversation on enforcement, legality and the fragile balance of social harmony.
00:16Amid rising tensions, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim reminded Malaysians that any action must be grounded in law and carried out
00:23by the proper authorities, urging the public not to take matters into their own hands.
00:30Against this backdrop, lawyer M. Thailin stressed that such disputes are fundamentally legal in nature and should be resolved through
00:37proper civil processes.
00:39He explained that the question at the heart of most disputes was whether the house of worship has a lawful
00:46right to occupy the land it sits on.
00:49He cautioned that even decades of occupation do not automatically translate into ownership and landowners may seek court orders under
00:57existing laws to recover possession,
00:59Meanwhile, when it concerns land authority approval, Thailin said that even when land ownership is not in dispute, houses of
01:06worship must still comply with planning and building regulations.
01:11Under the Street Drainage and Building Act 1974 and the Local Government Act 1976, any building, including houses of worship,
01:19requires proper approval from the local authority.
01:22Failure to secure approval amounts to a breach of civil law, Thailin said, though it does not automatically constitute a
01:29criminal offence.
01:31However, he agreed that enforcement action taken against houses of worship can carry wider social implications,
01:37particularly in a multi-religious society such as Malaysia's, where such structures may have stood for decades.
01:45Thailin called on the authorities to ensure that proper procedures are followed, urging that they avoid taking unilateral or rushed
01:52action that could escalate tensions unnecessarily.
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