Muslims fumed at ignorant brethren for engaging in ‘gotong-royong’ cleaning of Penang’s Hindu temple
TOLERANCE in the name of diversity has limit as Muslims have expressed furore at a viral video of a purported heartwarming display of unity in Penang!
This follows the act of multi-racial staff from Ascott Citadines Hotel Georgetown Penang coming together to clean a Hindu temple in Jalan Datu Keramat.
The video shared by the hotel on Oct 7 showed the team pouring water and cleaning the temple’s interior and surrounding areas.
Captioned Different Backgrounds; One Community, One Heart, the initiative received praise from non-Muslim netizens for promoting kindness, religious harmony and unity among Malaysians regardless of race or religion.
However, the same cannot be said of their Muslim compatriots who slammed their brethren for partaking the gotong-royong routine.
“What is this trying to convey?? Tolerance?? Harmony??” fumed Threader @chepai2023 in a post which garnered 15.1K likes, 2.9K comments, 1.7K re-posts and 2.7K shares at the time of writing.
“According to the Federal Territory Mufti Department, it’s haram (forbidden) for Muslims to directly participate in the community service activities to clean the houses of other religions,” asserted one commenter.
Another berated his brethren “for cleaning the idols” while recalling the holy Prophet having fought rigorously “to enter Mecca to destroy houses of idol worship”.
Apparently, one non-Muslim tried to decently quell the outrage that the seemingly corporate social responsibility (CSR) exercise by the hotel management should not be an issue given he had previously “helped clean up mosques and surau”.
“I was the only Indian kid during my primary school days when my mother was a teacher at a village school,” recounted one Sashvin Nair (@_nsashv1n___).
So, I would help my friends even during Yassin recitation, spread out mats, sweep the prayer room and even clean the village mosque as well. But that’s it, to those asking for photo evidence, that was 14 years ago.
At one point, I could even memorise all “doa” (Muslim prayers) and understood the religion of my Muslim friends and respected it.
This is when some Muslims came forward to stress that “Islam is not the same as other religions given there’re red lines that can’t be crossed”.
One apologetic Muslim went on to explain that while the underlying intention of the hotel staff is good. “in the context of Islam, there’re rules that have been established which is Muslims aren’t permitted to clean any house of worship other than that of Islamic faith”.
Well, this outrage was imminent across all social media platforms. On the KISAH & SEJARAH Facebook page which boasts 191.2K members, one Mohd Hafifie berated the Muslim hotel staffers as “kids who don’t attend KAFA (Kelas Al-Quran dan Fardu Ain) class or slept through their religious classes”.
Over at X, anti-illegal temple proponent Fendi #RobohKuilHaram (@BendiTheBagak) lashed out at the fact that “why is it always just Malays who have to show tolerance while the other group doesn’t even bother to come help slaughter the cow during the Muslim korban (sacrificial) ritual”.
“Anyway, this (the act of cleaning temple) is HARAM in Islam because it helps the polytheists commit shirk against Allah SWT,” he put his foot down.
Eventually, the public fury was put to rest with the dakwah division of JAKIM (Department of Islamic Development Malaysia) came out with a verdict that somehow ran parallel with the concerns expressed by Muslim netizens.
Let the brotherhood of humanity be broad, let the boundaries of faith be firm.
Respect remains respect.
Help remains help.
Faith remains protected.
That is tolerance guided by the Sharia. – Oct 12, 2026
Main image credit: Telus Malaysia/Threads
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Given the anger of some Mulims in this narrative, should an Islamic party were to rule Malaysia, it's likely non-Islamic religions won't be tolerated anymore.
