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Malaysia: Under pressure, government reinstates ban on use of “Allah” in Catholic paper

Mar 3, 2009 12:01 am By Marisol Seibold

Having reversed their prior reversal of the ban, they’re right back where they started, and The Herald once again can’t say “Allah,” after a prominent Muslim organization warned of national and international outrage over the decision among Muslims.

“Malaysia Restores ‘Allah’ Ban for Christians,” from the Associated Press, March 2 (thanks to Dr. Death):

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia “” The Malaysian government will issue a new decree restoring a ban on Christian publications using the word “Allah” to refer to God, officials said Sunday.

Home Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar said a previous Feb. 16 decree that allowed Christian publications to use the word as long as they specified the material was not for Muslims was a mistake, the national Bernama news agency reported.

The about-turn came after Islamic groups slammed the government and warned that even conditional use of the word by Christians would anger Muslims, who make up the country’s majority.

A senior ministry official confirmed Syed Hamid’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, who declined to be named citing protocol, 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.

Malaysia’s minorities have often complained that their constitutional right to practice their religions freely has come under threat from the Malay Muslim-dominated government. They cite destruction of Hindu temples and conversion disputes as examples. The government denies any discrimination.

The Herald, the Roman Catholic Church’s main newspaper in the country, had filed a legal suit to challenge the government ban on non-Muslims using the word.

The Herald argued that the Arabic word is a common reference for God that predates Islam and has been used for centuries as a translation in Malay.

Qur’an 29:46 itself supports the argument that the usage predates Islam, saying “Our [i.e., the Islamic] Allah and your Allah is One, and to Him do we surrender.” (Full text at the link to the prior story above.) However, that is a talking point for Islamic proselytizing, and an affirmation of the Islamic understanding of its deity as the sole correct one — not a proclamation of common interfaith ground. Under Islamic law, a Christian or any other monotheist certainly could not argue in kind to a Muslim audience that “We worship the same God, but, by the way, we do it right.”

Rev. Lawrence Andrew, the editor of the Herald, said Sunday the publication had not been notified of the government’s change in policy.

“Unfortunately the apparent relief that we imagined we were able to enjoy has been short-lived,” he said.

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