A controversial
ruling by the Court of Appeal is now being felt.
In view of the court's
decision banning the use of 'Allah' as the word for the Christian God, Malaysia's
Home Ministry seized, 2,000 copies of the Herald,
at Kota Kinabalu Airport, Sabah State.
The Catholic weekly is published by the Archdiocese
of Kuala Lumpur.
Ministry officials
said that the court's ruling meant that they have to verify pre-emptively
whether the weekly complied with its order or used "unlawfully the word Allah".
In an official
statement on its Facebook page
announcing the action, the Home Ministry noted that "the inspection found no
unlawful use" of the word "in the publication."
For this reason, it released
the copies for distribution on "27 October 2013".
Asked
about the situation, the Herald's
editor Fr Lawrence Andrew said that the Home Ministry did not give him any official
explanation.
What is more, however swiftly they carried out checks at Kota
Kinabalu Airport, the seizure effectively "prevented the weekly's distribution"
in time for last Sunday's Mass among Catholic parishes in Sabah.
Indeed,
the decision to release the paper came only after Mgr Murphy Pakiam, archbishop
of Kuala Lumpur, and Wilfred Madius Tangau, a lawmaker with the ruling party (Barisan
Nasional), personally intervened in the matter.
It
should be noted that Sabah (where the distribution of the weekly was stopped)
is on the island of Borneo along with Sarawak. The two states are home to two thirds
of Malaysia' Christians, and are very different from mainland Malaysia.
In this
part of the country, the use of Allah has never been controversial. Christians have
used it without any problems, living in relative harmony and closeness with
members of other religions, often within the same family. For the past 14 years,
the Catholic weekly has done the same.
In view
of the controversy, Jagir Singh, president of the Malaysian Consultative Council
of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism (MCCBCHS), slammed the
Home Ministry for claiming the right to "regulate fundamental liberties,
including freedom of religion".
Similarly, the Malaysian Council of Churches calls
the decision "a violation of Churches' rights".
The issue
of whether Christians have the right to use the word Allah for the Christian
God in media and the Bible broke out in 2008 when the Home Ministry threatened
to revoke the Herald's licence to publish.
The weekly is Malaysia's main Catholic print publication.
In their
response, Church leaders took the government to court for violating rights
enshrined in the constitution.
In
2009, the High Court ruled in favour of the Catholic paper, granting Catholics the
right to use the word Allah, a decision that shocked and angered many Muslims
who claim the word for Islam's exclusive use.
In turn, this unleashed a wave of
violence in many parts of the country, with attacks and bombings against
churches and other Christian places of worship.
In order
to restrain and placate extremist Islamist groups, the Malaysian government appealed
the court's decision.
Malaysia
is located in Southeast Asia and has a population of more than 28 million
people. A majority (60 per cent) are Muslim, followed by Buddhists.
Christians constitute
the third largest group numbering around 2.6 million.
A few
years ago, a 400-year-old Latin-Malay dictionary was re-issued.
It shows that Allah
was used in the Bible as the word for God in the local language.