Zaid: Crackdown on conversions the way out of ‘Allah’ impasse

(MM) - Stronger anti-conversion and proselytisation laws will let Putrajaya address Muslim apostasy and allow the Christian use of “Allah” to end a growing standoff over the Arabic word, former minister Zaid Ibrahim said today.

Accusing Putrajaya of having taken the “lazy way out” in 1988 by banning non-Muslims from using the Arabic word for God, Zaid said the government could still return religious ties to how they were before the now-soured interfaith relations and “widespread animosity” between the Muslim majority and the Christian community here.

“If Christians say ‘Allah’ is integral to their Scriptures and their faith, then let’s accept that and move on. Equally, Christians should affirm that they will respect the rights of Muslims to practise their faith undisturbed,” the former Umno leader wrote in a blog posting today titled “The way to end the ‘Allah’ row”.

“No one should engage in deceitful, coercive or unlawful activities to convert anyone else — it’s not only illegal but morally repugnant,” he added, acknowledging fears by the Muslim community of alleged conversion attempts directed at them.

Earlier in his blog post, Zaid said that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak should recognise that “Christians consider the use of ‘Allah’ to be integral to their faith despite the ‘finding of fact’ by the Court of Appeal that it was not”.

Najib should also have a special sitting with the Malay rulers to solve the “Allah” controversy and revisit the 1988 decision to ban non-Muslims from using the Arabic word for God, Zaid said.

Pointing to the “repeated public display of utter confusion” by the government on the effects of the ban, Zaid said the conflicting opinions amounted to “international embarrassment” and needs to be stopped with clear discussions by the country’s leaders.

“The prime minister and the Malay rulers must discuss this issue with detachment and clarity. They should begin by returning to the pre-1988 status quo,” he wrote.

The former law minister said that a review of the then Home Minister Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar’s reports and consultation of the religious departments in different states would show that there was “real concern” prior to the 1988 ban that certain Christian evangelists “were aggressively converting Muslims”.

The ban only served to treat the symptoms rather the real problem of Muslim conversion, he said, referring to the federal government and the state religious authorities’ ban.

“It merely gazetted a few regulations banning the use of some words and thought the problem would go away. The state religious authorities took a similar route by passing laws to prevent ‘Allah’ and other words of Arabic origin from being used by non-Muslim. They thought this would stop the process of conversion,” he said.

Anticipating the outrage of the Muslim community over the reversal of the 1988 ban, Zaid suggested that the prime minister bolster his move by beefing up anti-conversion measures.

“The prime minister and the Malay Rulers can make this point to Muslims: that in exchange for the use of the word ‘Allah’ by the Christians in their prayers, publications and the Malay Bible, Christians in turn will support the enactment of special laws and enforcement mechanisms to protect the Muslims from any conversion,” Zaid said.

Earlier, he said that most Christians respect the country’s laws and would likely not mind a “special task force” by the government to look into conversions of Muslims.

The tussle over “Allah” arose in 2008 when Catholic newspaper The Herald was barred by the Home Ministry from using the Arabic word. The Catholic Church had contested this in court and won a High Court decision in 2009 upholding its constitutional right to do so.

Putrajaya later appealed the decision and successfully overturned the earlier decision when the Court of Appeal ruled this October that “Allah” was not integral to the Christian faith.

Since the ruling, churches in Sabah and Sarawak have become more vocal in pressing for their right to use the term that they say is entrenched in the 20- and 18-point agreements with the two states, insisting they will continue their age-old practice of referring to God as “Allah” in their worship and in their holy scriptures.

Islamic groups and authorities have of late also stepped up their “vigilance” against non-Muslims over their use of the word “Allah”, with a closed-door Christian event in Selangor now reportedly the subject of an investigation by the state Islamic religious department.

The Catholic Church has since appealed to the country’s top court for clarity on the religious row that has drawn deep lines between Malaysia’s non-Muslim minorities and its 60 per cent Muslim population, with the Federal Court fixing February 24 next year to hear the application for appeal.