KUALA LUMPUR // Malaysia’s top court on Monday ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word “Allah” to refer to God, delivering the final word on a contentious debate that has reinforced complaints of unfair treatment from religious minorities.
The federal court rejected a challenge by the Roman Catholic Church and upheld a government ban on the use of the word.
Most Christians in Malaysia worship in English, Tamil or various Chinese dialects, and refer to God in those languages but some Malay-speaking people on Borneo island have no other word for God but “Allah”.
The dispute over the usage of the word is unique to Malaysia. Christians and Jews across the Middle East and other parts of Asia have used the word Allah for centuries.
The church had argued that the ban failed to consider the rights of minorities in the largely Muslim country. The lengthy court cases, which began in 2009, had also raised questions over whether freedom of religion guaranteed by the constitution is real.
“We are disappointed. The four judges who denied us the right to appeal did not touch on fundamental basic rights of minorities,” said Rev Lawrence Andrew, editor of The Herald, the newspaper at the centre of the controversy.
“It will confine the freedom of worship,” he said. “We are a minority in this country, and when our rights are curtailed, people feel it.”
The federal court ruled that the church had no grounds to appeal last year’s lower court decision that banned the use of “Allah” in the Malay-language weekly. The Catholic church may ask the court to review the decision, Rev Andrew said.
The government says the word Allah should be reserved exclusively for Muslims, who make up nearly two-thirds of the country’s 29 million people. If other religions use the term, that could confuse Muslims and lead them to convert away from Islam, it claims.
Christian leaders deny this, arguing that the ban is unreasonable because Christians who speak the Malay language have long used the word in their Bibles, prayers and songs. Christians make up about 9 per cent of the population.
The ban appears to apply mostly to published materials, not spoken words, and newspapers using the term would lose their licence if they used the word. Imported Malay-language Bibles containing the term Allah, typically from Indonesia, have already been blocked.
Beyond that, it was not clear what the punishment would be for violating the ban.
The controversy has already provoked violence in Malaysia.
Anger over a lower court ruling against the government ban in 2009 led to a string of arson attacks and vandalism at churches and other places of worship. A 2013 judgement by the Court of Appeals reversed that decision, prompting the Catholic church to ask the federal court to overturn it.
Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he welcomed the ruling, but said he hoped no groups would politicise the matter and use it to divide races.
“This is an emotional issue that can affect the country’s (racial) harmony. We must handle it with wisdom,” he said. “The court has made a decision, so let’s accept it.”
* Associated Press
