By Syed Jaymal Zahiid - The Malaysian Insider
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 4 — The Special Appeals and Powers High Court has set March 5 to hear the judicial review application by East Malaysia’s most prominent church, the Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB), to use ‘Allah’ in its Bahasa Malaysia publications for distribution to its congregants.
The SIB is also seeking a 10-point declaration which among others, demand that the government recognises its constitutional right to use the term “Allah” in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia versions of the Bible and in all its religious publications.
The church was established in 1928 and spread its wings to peninsular Malaysia in 1993 where it has 31 congregations, 29 of which worship in Bahasa Malaysia.
Lawyers representing SIB told reporters here Justice Aziah Ali will be replacing Justice Abdul Kadir Musa who presided over the case when the application was initially made in 2007. She will then decide on case management for the judicial review.
SIB, an Evangelical group, is one of the biggest churches in East Malaysia with 500,000 members, but its influence is growing in the peninsula with the migration of many Sabahan and Sarawakian Christians here in search of work.
It has some 600 churches nationwide.
SIB president Jerry Dusing applied for the judicial review after the Royal Customs and Excise Department confiscated certain publications belonging to the group that was imported from Indonesia.
The publications, used by SIB churches for their Sunday School, are written in Indonesian and use the term “Allah” to describe the Christian God.
The Special Appeals and Powers High Court had previously decided to postpone the hearing after the Federal Counsel suggested the case be solved amicably.
Amid hope that then Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi would solve the “Allah” issue, SIB agreed, but on the condition that the confiscated publications be released.
No updates were given following the government’s suggestion to settle the matter amicably. The court then called today to set the hearing mention date.
Dusing told reporters at the court today that the SIB was doing this to uphold its right to religious freedom and blasted the attempt by the government to compromise on the “Allah” row.
Minister in the Prime Minister Department Datuk Seri Nazri Aziz had said that East Malaysian churches are allowed to use “Allah” in their practices but Dusing insist that the suggestions is impractical.
“We have East Malaysians in the Peninsula as well. This is contradictory to the 1 Malaysia ideals. How can there be two systems in one country?” asked Dusing.
Nazri’s proposal came in the wake of a High Court ruling on New Year’s Eve that the Catholic weekly Herald had a constitutional right to use the term “Allah” to describe the Christian God in its Bahasa Malaysia section.
The Herald is distributed in Roman Catholic churches in the country and is prominently stamped with the words “Not for Muslims” but Muslim groups said it was a conspiracy to convert them.
Conversions are rare among Muslims with only Negeri Sembilan having laws that allow apostasy, that is, conversion out of Islam.
The ruling also touched off a series of attacks on places of worship — churches, mosques, suraus and a Sikh gurdwara and a convent school,
Police has so far charged three people for the first attack on the Metro Tabernacle church in Kuala Lumpur and another four were charged for the attacks in two churches and a convent school in Taiping.
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