A year on, a silent war over ‘Allah’ between church and state

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 17 — As the court drags its feet in addressing the “Allah” controversy after more than a year, the Catholic Church has reprinted a rare 17th-century Malay-Latin dictionary in what seems to be a silent bid to speed up its case.

The “Dictionarium Malaico-Latin and Latino-Malaicum” was first published in 1631 by the Vatican Press in Rome. Church officials say it is historical proof that its missionaries had played a key role in the exchange of knowledge and culture between Europe and Southeast Asia some 400 years ago.

Reverend Lawrence Andrew, who had worked for the past 11 years to reprint the dictionary, told The Malaysian Insider it was crucial to counter the mistaken belief that the spread of Christianity through local languages in Malaysia was a recent 20th-century phenomenon.

“It’s to say it’s been here for a long time... 400 years,” said the editor of the Catholic Church’s local newspaper, The Herald Weekly.

The Herald had challenged the Home Ministry for the right to use the word “Allah” to describe God in the Christian context and had won in a landmark ruling at the High Court on New Year’s Eve in 2009. But the paper is unable to use it as the ministry managed to get a stay pending its appeal.

The Court of Appeal in Putrajaya has yet to fix a hearing date for the case. Veteran lawyers have said there is little the church can do speed up the process as there are no rules on a time limit; adding it was not unusual for a case to be called years after being filed.

Andrew had submitted a copy of the dictionary as historical evidence to back the church’s suit after the ministry tendered several essays by Islamic scholars from the influential Institute of Islamic Understanding here supporting its case.

The priest had got the Holy See’s approval to reprint the dictionary 12 years ago but was only able to do so recently due to a lack of resources.

“There was the cost and also the technology now has made it much easier to clean up the pages to make it fit for print. It was very tedious work as the copy on microfilm was not clear,” the priest explained.

The reprint of the dual-language dictionary is said to be an exact replica.

Andrew said the medieval spelling of the Malay words may prove hard to read and understand for the modern person, but he had decided against updating the spelling and typeset “so people cannot say we modified it”.

He seems overly defensive but has been repeatedly raked over hot coals by some Islamic scholars and government officials who continue to block the Catholic Church from being allowed to use certain words to describe God despite a court ruling.

Of the original edition, only one copy has survived to today and is being kept in the Pontifical Urbanian University in Rome, according to the Vatican’s former representative to Malaysia, Archbishop Luigi Bressan.

“For example, the Vatican Library does not have it; neither do the libraries connected with it,” Bressan wrote in the notes to his essay “A 17th-Century Roman Dictionary of the Malay Language” that was also published as a sort of foreword in the 2010 reprint.

Bressan, who was the Apostolic Delegate to Malaysia from July 26, 1993 to March 25, 1999, was crucial in reproducing the historical document.

He observed that the Vatican had as early as 1622 set up a special printing office to spread its Catholic Christian doctrine worldwide, and had marked the importance of Malay in that role.

“The activity was quite intense, but the structures were limited and did not permit the publication of many volumes in the first years.

“In the next six years, 28 books were printed in 10 different languages: eight Greek, four Japanese (with Latin letters), three Latin, two Arabic (a grammar and a catechism), one Armenian (a short catechism), three Georgian, three Illyrian, one Chaldean, one Ethopian, one Syriac ... and the Dictionary Latin-Malay,” the Italian archbishop wrote in his essay.

Bressan marked the Jesuit missionaries had “distinguished themselves” in translating the new Asian languages into Latin and European languages.

St Francis Xavier was instrumental in romanising the Malay language, which was used widely but had no written form in Southeast Asia then.

But Bressan said the job of preparing the Malay-Latin dictionary was given to a medieval Dutch professor, David Haex.

The Herald has reprinted 500 copies of the 1631 dictionary that can be bought for RM10 each from its office at 5 Jalan Robertson, off Jalan Pudu, 50150 Kuala Lumpur (Tel: 03-2026-6466).