Dr M says ‘Allah’ not a big issue

By Asrul Hadi Abdullah Sani - The Malaysian Insider

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad said the “Allah” issue has been blown out of proportion, stressing it was unfair to label Malaysia as a restrictive and undemocratic country.

The outspoken former prime minister, whose administration in 1986 restricted usage of the term and other Arabic words exclusive to Islam, pointed out that if Malaysia should blamed as undemocratic then Switzerland and France has to be placed in the same category as well.

“Well, I have bad perception of Switzerland for example which does not allow minarets. France which does not allow people to wear tudung (head scarf). So this things happen to other countries. So it is up to the press here to point that out that we are not the only culprit, others are also being very unreasonable or restrictive and not being democratic,” Dr Mahathir told reporters here today.

“So my perception of these countries that they are not very democratic,” he added.

Malaysia, which prides itself as a model Islamic country with a multi-racial population living in peace, was recently rocked by a High Court ruling allowing Catholic weekly Herald to use ‘Allah’ to describe the Christian God. An uproar among the majority Muslim community led to attacks on 10 churches, a mosque, a Sikh temple and a convent school.

The former prime minister also took a jab at his political foe, Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz, and said that the de facto law minister has pre-empt the court’s decision.

“I don’t know there seems to some confusion there. On one hand, we hear that government will wait all the decision on the appeal court. On the other hand, Nazri seems to have anticipated the decision of the Appeal court by saying that so and so can use but others can’t use so I don’t know what is happening. I am not in the government as you know,” he said.

The Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department said yesterday that non-Muslims are allowed to use the word ‘Allah’ in three states - Penang, Sabah and Sarawak- and the Federal Territories.

The High Court had on Dec 31 last year ruled that the Catholic Church’s Herald weekly had the constitutional right to publish the word ‘Allah’ to cater to its Bahasa Malaysia-speaking followers