THE Mawang Lake area was formerly a plain, undesirable, barren land. Scattered around the town are chunks of big rocks that were sacred to the traditional Gowa people. "These rocks were a place of pagan worship in Prophet Moses's time," believes Fajar, an An-Nadzir member, an Islamic community settling near the area. Some villagers went there for fishing or for family picnics.

Fast forward to the late 1990s. The few people that inhabit the areaamong