How Tall May a House of Worship Be?

GK Ganesan : The State of Selangor capped non-Muslim houses of worship at 72 feet. The Constitution has a quiet question to ask: on planning, piety, and the gentle art of measuring devotion in feet.

There is a certain mercy in the building code. It asks no awkward questions about the soul. It concerns itself with setbacks and sewers, with parking bays and the angle of a fire escape, and it applies its arithmetic with magnificent indifference to whether the building in question is a noodle shop, a clinic, or a house of God.

This is, on the whole, a good thing. A society that lets its planners keep to drains tends to sleep more soundly than one that lets them adjudicate the hereafter.

Which brings us, by a short walk, to Selangor.

Late last year the state government approved a set of planning guidelines for community facilities. Among the dry tables of land ratios and access roads sat a section on non-Muslim houses of worship — temples, churches, gurdwaras and the like. The document arrived without fanfare. It surfaced in May, when a legislator read out some of its clauses and found them less than soothing.

The state has since pressed pause, convened a committee, and announced that it is “open to reviewing” the standards. One generally is, once the neighbours have noticed.

So: what does the document actually say, and why should a citizen who has never built so much as a garden shed spare it a thought?

Read it all here, save and bookmark this page.......