A Malaysian court charged 12 Muslims with criminal offenses yesterday for parading a severed cow head to protest the construction of a Hindu temple in a case that stoked religious tensions in this multiethnic country.
The 12 were among a large group of people who had marched from a mosque in Shah Alam, the capital of Selangor state, to the state chief minister’s office on Aug. 28 with the bloodied cow head. The cow is the most sacred animal in Hinduism.
They stopped at the gates of the office, where they stomped and spat on the head after listening to fiery speeches.
Their actions were recorded on video and the footage was uploaded onto the Internet.
Twelve of the protesters were charged with illegal assembly and six of them were also charged with sedition, which is punishable by up to three years in jail and a fine. Illegal assembly is punishable by one year in jail and a fine.
Sedition is defined as promoting ill will and hostility between different races.
The Shah Alam Sessions Court freed all 12 on bail. No date has been set for the trial, but the case will be heard again on Oct. 21.
The cow head protest deeply offended Hindus and stoked tensions among Malaysia’s main ethnic groups — the Malay Muslim majority and Chinese and Indian minorities. Indians are mostly Hindus.
Many of the protesters were residents of a largely Malay Muslim neighborhood in Shah Alam where the state government had planned to build the temple near a mosque.
The conflict highlighted frustrations among religious minorities about strict guidelines that restrict the number of non-Muslim places of worship, partly based on whether enough people of the non-Muslim faith live in the area where the church or temple is to be built.
Defense lawyer Salehuddin Saldin said his clients did not intend to offend Hindus and carried the cow head only as a symbol of the state government’s “stupidity.”
“It is not a serious offense. If you look at the Malay culture, the cow is synonymous to stupidity and not meant to insult other religions,” he said.
P. Uthayakumar, a prominent Hindu activist, dismissed the argument as laughable.
“It is a lame excuse,” said Uthayakumar, who noted that the Muslim protesters had also warned of bloodshed if the temple was built there.
State authorities in Selangor later said they found a new site in Shah Alam to build the temple, a few hundred meters from the original site.
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