Malaysian court upholds Christians’ right to use the word Allah
KUALA LUMPUR (APEN) – A Malaysian court has ruled that Christians have the constitutional right to use the word Allah when referring to God.
The Kuala Lumpur high court said the government ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah was “illegal, null and void.”
The court ruling was on a lawsuit filed by the Roman Catholic Church in 2007 after the government blocked the Catholic newspaper, The Herald, from using the word Allah.
“Even though Islam is the federal religion, it does not empower the respondents [Malaysian government and the home ministry] to prohibit the use of the word,” said high court judge, Justice Lau Bee Lan.
Christians hailed the 31 December high court ruling as a victory of freedom of religion in the Muslim majority country.
Father Lawrence Andrew, editor of The Herald said that the ruling upheld freedom of expression and religion in the country. He said in a statement that it was indeed a landmark case for our nation.
Father Lawrence told the media that the Bahasa Malaysia-speaking community of the Christian faith can now continue to freely use the word Allah without any interference from the authorities. Mandarin, English and Tamil editions of the Herald do not use the word Allah.
The ban had affected the Bahasa Malaysia-language edition of the Herald, which is read mostly by indigenous people on the Eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo island.
Christians make up about 9.1 of Malaysia’s 28 million people. About 60 per cent of the country’s population is Malay Muslims who are not allowed to convert.
Justice Lau Bee Lan in her judgment declared that under Article 3(1) of the Federal Constitution, the applicant the Roman Catholic Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, publisher of the Herald, had the constitutional right to use the word Allah in the exercise of his right that religions other than Islam might be practiced in peace and harmony in the country.
She said in her judgment that the government is not empowered to impose the ban.
The government authorities had insisted that Allah is an Islamic word that should be used exclusively by Muslims, and its use by other religions would be misleading and could threaten national security.
Justice Lan said that the government had failed throughout the trial to prove how the use of the word Allah could threaten the national security.
According to the Herald, the government’s ban on the use of the word, “prompted many minority religious groups to argue that the Arabic word is a common term for God that predates Islam and has been used for centuries as a translation in Malay.”
According to Reverend Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, “Malay has borrowed from Arabic, just as it has from Sanskrit and Portuguese.”
The court decision has closed a year long legal battle between the Catholic Church and the mainly Muslim government over the issue.
According to reports, there are many Muslim activists and officials who see using the word Allah in Christian publications as attempts to proselytize.
The government lawyers have yet to take a decision on whether to appeal Justice Lau Bee Lan’s verdict in a higher court. They have one month to do that.
