American Buddhist Net

IPOH: There is a growing trend of youths being hired as hit men in exchange for monthly salaries, Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk T. Murugiah said.

These youths, he said, were also given assignments to injure their targets and also to rob or steal from others.

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MUAR: Police yesterday nabbed a suspected mental patient who tried to burn down a Buddhist temple, but quickly ruled him out as the suspect involved in the kindergarten attack.

The 48-year-old man was nabbed as he tried to set fire to the 30-year-old Buddhist temple in Jalan Muar-Yong Peng yesterday morning.

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AS A veterinarian, he should have known better than to have made such a suggestion. More so being the deputy director-general of the Veterinary Services Department.

Dr Ahmad Suhaimi Omar has landed in hot water for proposing that municipal council dog pounds be allowed to sell the animals to those who like eating canine meat.

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KUALA LUMPUR - MALAYSIAN religious officials in the northern state of Kelantan are investigating two cases of child marriage involving girls under the age of 12, according to reports on Friday.

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Girl, 10, forced to marry

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia's High Court on Thursday granted a Hindu woman custody of her child after a bitter court battle with her estranged Muslim husband, who converted their children to Islam and then took possession of them.

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An Indian spiritual centre in Kuala Lumpur has been closed after it was revealed that ashram's spiritual guru Swami Paramahamsa Nithyananda was allegedly involved in a sex scandal.

The centre's spokesman claimed that the ashram has ceased operations until "the truth is revealed".

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...In Islamic banking, returns are reliant on the financial health of the deposit-taking institution and its investments. Common interest is ''earning money from money'', usury or riba as its known in Arabic and is haram, forbidden in Islam. Profit should be something created when money is transformed into capital via personal effort. Conversely, it applies that if a bank makes losses, depositors will bear that burden too. Except most of the world's Islamic economies are doing very well compared with the mostly Christian West that has traditionally dominated global finance.

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The Roman Catholic Church in Malaysia has criticised the authorities for not pressing charges against two Muslim journalists who took Holy Communion.

The two apparently put communion wafers in their mouths and then spat them out.

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Malaysia's largest English-language newspaper has refused to publish a prominent commentator's column on the caning of three Muslim women, weeks after it got into trouble with the government over a similar article by one of its editors.

Social activist Marina Mahathir said The Star spiked her weekly column Wednesday because of concerns that such sensitive articles could jeopardize its printing permit. All publications in Malaysia must renew their printing licenses each year to operate.

..."[T]here is room for courage, to stand up for freedom of speech. If we capitulate every time, then why bother publishing at all?" she wrote.

..."What is the point of censoring the mainstream media when there is the freewheeling Internet? The other point we should make to people like The Star is, what is the point of constantly sucking up to the government when they can still turn around and bite you?" Marina said.

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RAWANG: For the Global Ikhwan movement, sharing is caring, and caring is love.

The group, which advocates polygamy as a way of life, celebrated Prophet Muhammad's birthday yesterday with a gathering of hundreds of men, women and children from the same family tree, congregating to show the world the benefits and beauty in polygamy.

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Some friends think my wife and I are foolish enough to return to Malaysia after having emigrated to Australia for six years.

“Why do you want to return to a rotten country that is getting even more rotten by the day?” We get this sort of question unceasingly in the 13 years since we have been back from Australia.

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GEORGE TOWN: More than 200 Buddhist devotees gathered at the Penang Buddhist Association to offer robes to 70 Theravanan monks here at Jalan Anson yesterday. Association president Datuk Seri Khoo Keat Siew said the monks were from Penang, Perlis and Perak.

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THE late Tan Guat Gnoh’s life was characterised by her passion for helping the needy, the handicapped and even the Untouchables of India. The 54-year-old former accountant turned jewellery shop proprietor had been to India seven times for humanitarian work.

But her trip to Ladakh on Aug 25 last year, proved to be her last. Tan and three others (Julie Ang Ee Lee, Jennie Cheong and Lee Ah Yem) lost their lives in a road accident.

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Malaysia is proud of its diverse population, more than half of which is Muslim. It is also home to large Chinese and Indian communities, who are mainly Christian, Buddhist and Hindu. But, as Jennifer Pak discovers, recent violence surrounding the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims, has brought into question just how unified Malaysia is.

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Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia on Friday defended its decision to cane three Muslim women for having sex outside of marriage, saying that the punishment served as a reminder to Muslims to adhere to the requirements of the religion. Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the whipping of three women on February 9 was legal and, therefore, should not be questioned by any parties.

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Malay, Chinese and Indian Malaysians, thrown together by a colourful past, have often managed a mutual accommodation of each other's different faiths and cultures.

But the recent argument over the use of the word "Allah" has provoked strident - and divergent - views both within the Muslim community and outside it.

So too has the labelling of Indian and Chinese Malaysians as "pendatang", or immigrants, by a senior ruling party member, Nasir Safar.

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Don't just celebrate the Year of the Tiger. Act to save this iconic species, whose numbers have plunged in the wild. Tiger experts have warned that the big cat will be extinct across 13 range countries if nothing is done to stop its hunting, loss of habitat and deprivation of prey.

In Malaysia, only some 500 Malayan tigers are believed to roam our forests - down from 3,000 some 50 years ago. For the species to rebound to a sustainable level, tiger conservationists calculated that we have to double the existing tiger population in 10 years.

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Malay, Chinese and Indian Malaysians, thrown together by a colourful past, have often managed a mutual accommodation of each other's different faiths and cultures.

But the recent argument over the use of the word "Allah" has provoked strident - and divergent - views both within the Muslim community and outside it.

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Tribesmen in Malaysia are being paid by syndicates to trap wildlife, including critically endangered tigers, to meet insatiable demand from China, a conservationist said yesterday.

“Local tribesmen are being used by the middlemen to collect the forest products as they are familiar with the jungle,” said Dionysius Sharma, executive director with WWF-Malaysia. “The demand for wildlife from Asia’s forests to be used in China for traditional medicine is strong.”

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JOHOR BARU: On Jan 27, 865 AD, a Japanese monk named Shinnyo began a journey to India to study Buddhism.
He never made it to his destination but ended up in a province on the southern tip of the Malay peninsula.

In the Japanese cemetery here in Jalan Kebun Teh, there is a memorial and shrine in honour of "Bhiksu (Buddhist monk) Shinnyo", born in 799.

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A PRECIOUS collection of sacred Buddhist relics by renowned Buddhist master, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, is currently touring the world and will be in Malaysia in March.

The Maitreya Relics Tour will provide a rare opportunity for Malaysians of the Buddhist faith to view these relics which were found among the cremation ashes of Buddhist masters. The relics resemble beautiful, pearl-like crystals.

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...Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said the authorities would take action against individuals operating those blogs if they went overboard.

He said the Federal Commercial Crime Investigation Department was monitoring websites and keeping track of postings that touched on sensitive issues, such as the institution of the Malay sultans, religion and race.

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Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal

Gag the Internet! An Obama official's frightening book about curbing speech online

KUALA LUMPUR - A Malaysian company has invented a machine it says will help Muslims purify themselves before prayers without excessively wasting water.

The ornate, green-colored machine comes with automatic sensors and basins to curb water usage during wudu, an Arabic word used to describe the act of washing the face, arms and legs before prayers.

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KUALA LUMPUR - A NEWS report says a Malaysian court has ordered two lovers to pay a fine of four buffaloes and a pig after they were found guilty of having an illicit affair.

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The Tzu-Chi Foundation which was founded by a nun in Taiwan has undergone a miraculous growth. It now has 10 million members in 47 countries who do charity work around the world and save the environment in the process.

AS a charity organisation, the growth of the Tzu-Chi Foundation is miraculous. Started off in 1966 by a Buddhist nun with a group of 30 housewives doing voluntary work, the Taiwan-based organisation today has 10 million members worldwide with branches in 47 countries.

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Eighteen Buddhist organisations have charged that the draft local plans of five councils in Selangor have failed to adhere to the planning guidelines for the allocation of land for places of worship.

They have formed an action committee called the Selangor Buddhist Development Committee to ensure that their objection to the draft plans would be heard.

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Pig heads were found at two Malaysian mosques, the latest incident of desecration and vandalism following an inter-faith dispute over the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims.

Worshippers arrived for morning prayers at a mosque in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, to find the bloodied heads of two wild boars wrapped in plastic bags together with one-ringgit notes. Heads were also found in the grounds of a mosque three kilometers (1.9 miles) away, police said. Pigs are considered unclean animals in Islam.

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CENTENARIAN Teresa Hsu kept some 200 people in stitches during her talk on ‘Love All Serve All’ at the Malaysian Buddhist Association hall in Penang last Friday.

For the bubbly Chinese-born Singaporean, who is affectionately known as Singapore’s Mother Teresa, laughter is definitely the best medicine.

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KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysian police said Friday they had arrested seven more people over a spate of attacks on churches that have escalated ethnic tensions.

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Dr M says 9/11 attacks staged to hit Muslim world

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21, 2010 (AFP) - Two Muslim prayer halls in Malaysia were set on fire Thursday, police said, following a spate of violence against churches triggered by a row over the use of the word "Allah".

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