Friday, April 15, 2011

Removal Of Buddha Statue In Indonesia

The Religious Affairs Ministry has ordered a large Buddhist statue in North Sumatra to be taken down after it raised the ire of Muslims in the area.

The problem in North Sumatra started after a number of people calling themselves GIB / Gerakan Islam Bersatu (United Islamic Movement) began to consider the Buddha statue in Tri Ratna a threat to Islamic faith in the city. They argued that the statue could upstage the city's historical symbol ‘Balai di Ujung Tanduk' located in front of it


Budi Setiawan, the ministry’s director general of Buddhist affairs, said that the decision to remove the six-meter-high statue in Tanjung Balai was final and could not be appealed.

He said discussions in October among Buddhists, the Indonesian Council of Ulema (MUI) and the local government resulted in an agreement to dismount the figure, which sat on top of a three-story temple in Vihara Tri Ratna Kota. This claim, however, has been disputed by the Buddhists.

Veryanto Sitohang, head of the Buddhist United Alliance of North Sumatra (ASB), condemned the decision , saying it “clearly violated human rights and law” by siding with Muslims.

8 comments:

Vendetta said...

This is the true face of indonesian native muslim, besides violence also hypocrite... No wonder the country always have disaster that kill many indon race...

Faid said...

i'm not trying to defend anyone, but lets say if in a country populated mostly buddhism, and there is another religion statue was build in the middle of them, what will they do? also remove the statue or let it be?

o btw, the 2nd pic is japan's daibutsu, not in indonesia.

@vendetta:
sorry, but disasters kill any
races everwhere and not based solely on this issue T__T

Fhez said...

Despite what happened, i still think Indonesia is more tolerant than Malaysia when it comes to religion.

Vendetta said...

Yeah, disaster kill any races, but what you should view is from the view of karma, if you believe that, disaster is the fruit of bad karma that are the result of our bad deeds or action.
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lets say if in a country populated mostly buddhism, and there is another religion statue was build in the middle of them, what will they do? also remove the statue or let it be?
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Can give me some prove that buddhism in thailand do the same things to the minority like they do in Indonesia? Besides use your logical thinking, is the statue that build in the top of the temple distract anything or maybe irritating or even damage the eyes of the muslim, think again before posting, if the statue is distracting in the terms of making injury to the surrounding then they will be gladly to remove it, do you know the problems why the statue is remove? Hope that this will open your mind to the real things happen around us.

Anonymous said...

muslim are rubbish

Rajesh Gindwani said...

If you think statues create disturbance then you have a mental problem. The same problem the Talibans had when they destoeyed the Bamiyan statues

Unknown said...

Japan allows the building of mosques that stand out prominenetly. Does that answer your question? Ornyou want to argue that a mosque is not a statue, so it is different? Then, you can ask the muslims to build a statue as a test.

Unknown said...

In some aspects, yes. In some aspects, no. In Malaysia, no one kills muslims of other sects. In Indonesia, the sunnis do.