PUTRAJAYA, Oct 28 — The Catholic Church weekly, the Herald, cannot refer to God as “Allah” even in Sabah and Sarawak, Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi said today, despite the prime minister’s assurance that East Malaysians were free to use the Arabic word.
Zahid said this was based on the recent Court of Appeal ruling that the Home Ministry’s decision to ban the use of the word “Allah” in the Herald was justified, but he stressed that the Al-Kitab, the Bahasa Malaysia translation of the Christian bible, is allowed to describe God as “Allah” as it is not technically a “publication”.
“It can be used in the Al-Kitab, but not in the Herald,” Zahid told reporters at his office here today, after meeting a Cambodian government minister.
“The Al-Kitab is not a publication; it’s a bible,” he added.
The Home Ministry seized copies of the Herald at the Kota Kinabalu airport last week for inspection, but cleared the newsletter for distribution yesterday after finding that the word “Allah” was not used in the weekly.
When asked if the ban of the word “Allah” was restricted to the Herald, Zahid said: “Refer to the court verdict”.
“I don’t want to go beyond what has been decided by the Court of Appeal,” he added.
According to Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew, around 2,000 copies of the weekly publication were seized at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport on Thursday, apparently on order of the Home Ministry.
The Council of Churches Malaysia (CCM), an umbrella body of Protestant churches, decried the confiscation as a violation of the Catholic Church’s right to distribute the newsletter to its own members.
The distribution ban is the latest incident to hit the controversial tussle between the Catholic Church and the government over the use of the word “Allah”.
Earlier this month, the Court of Appeal ruled that the Home Ministry’s decision to ban the use of the word in the Herald was justified, as the use of the word “Allah” was not integral to the practice of the Christian faith.
The ruling — which overturned an earlier High Court decision that the ban was unconstitutional — has since sparked confusion over the use of the Middle Eastern word by Christians in their worship, especially with conflicting opinions within the government itself on how far the ruling would affect practising Christians.
Churches in Sabah and Sarawak, however, have said that they will continue their age-old practice of referring to God as “Allah” in their worship and in their holy scriptures.
Several ministers also said recently that the 10-point solution issued by Putrajaya in 2011 — which allows the printing, importation and distribution of the Al-Kitab, the Bahasa Malaysia version of the Christian bible, containing the word “Allah” — should stand, despite the appellate court ruling.
The Najib administration issued the 10-point solution shortly before the Sarawak state election in 2011 to end a Home Ministry blockade of shipments of Christian holy scriptures in the Malay language containing the word “Allah”.
The Cabinet, through Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jala, had stated in the resolution that the large Bumiputera Christian population in Sabah and Sarawak could use their holy books in the Malay, Indonesian, and indigenous languages.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said previously that the ruling would not affect Sabah and Sarawak, while separately, another Cabinet minister claimed that Christians from the Borneo states could refer to God as “Allah” in peninsular Malaysia.
According to a 2010 census, Muslims are Malaysia’s largest religious group, followed by Buddhists. Christians are the third-largest at 2.6 million, which comes up to about 10 per cent of the Malaysian population.
Bumiputera Christians, who form about 64 per cent or close to two-thirds of the Christian community in Malaysia, have been addressing God as “Allah” when praying and speaking in the national language and in their native tongues for centuries.
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