Friday, March 06, 2009

Malaysian government reverses stand on Allah

The Malaysian government will issue a new decree restoring a ban on Christian publications using the word "Allah" to refer to God, officials said last Sunday .

An earlier decree, dated Feb 16, allowed Christian publications to use the word as long as they specified the material was not for Muslims, but the Home Affairs Minister has stated that this was decree was a mistake.

“The ban has not been lifted,” said Fr Lawrence Andrew, editor of The Herald, a Catholic weekly newspaper.

He said he had recently received a letter from the Home Ministry reinforcing the rule forbidding the word “Allah” in a non-Muslim context.

The earlier decree allowed Christians to use the word “Allah” once the front cover of the publication had the words ‘For Christianity’ written clearly in “font type Arial of size 16 in bold”.

However now, a senior ministry official has confirmed the Home Minister’s comments, saying there were "interpretation mistakes" in the Feb. 16 decree that led to the confusion.

"'Allah' cannot be used for other religions except Islam because it might confuse Muslims. This is the ministry's stand and it hasn't changed," the official told The Associated Press.

The official said the ministry was likely to issue a new decree to annul the old one and effectively re-impose the ban.

The dispute has become symbolic of increasing religious tensions in Malaysia, where 60 percent of the 27 million people are Muslim Malays.

A third of the population is ethnic Chinese and Indian, and many of them practice Christianity.
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(Source: CIN)