2015-01-21 15:46:00

Malaysia Church loses battle to use 'Allah' in Catholic newspaper


The Federal Court in Malaysia has ruled that the Catholic Church has no right to use the term “Allah” which means God  in the newsweekly Herald.

The decision follows the Church’s five year-long legal battle for the constitutional right to use the phrase.

A five-man bench led by Tan Sri Abdull Hamid Embong unanimously upheld that here had been no procedural unfairness in the Federal Court's earlier decision not to grant leave. He added that the threshold for the review had not been met.

A seven-member panel of federal court judges on June 23, 2014, dismissed the church's application for leave to appeal the Court of Appeal's decision to ban the Herald from using the Arabic word for "God" in its Bahasa language content.

Chief Justice Tun Arifin Zakaria was among the four on the panel who dismissed the church's application, in a 4-3 "skin of our teeth" judgment, as the church's lawyers have called it, that saw three other judges dissenting.

With no more legal avenues to pursue for the right to use the word "Allah" in the Herald, the publication’s editor Rev Father Lawrence Andrew expressed disappointment on Wednesday that the Federal Court's dismissal of the appeal would further undermine the rights of minorities.

"Malay has been the language in the church in Malaya for centuries and I have shown evidence [that Bahasa Malaysia] was already a language of worship for hundreds of years in devotional booklets,” he said. "And during this period, there was no trouble whatsoever, so I don't see an possibility of evoking trouble.”

The word “Allah” is widely used by the Christians in Sabah and Sarawak and the church has argued that the ban of its use in the Herald is a violation of freedom of religion and expression.

Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) politician Gan Peng Sieu, who is also a lawyer and was holding a watching brief on the case for the party, described the Federal Court's decision as a great injustice.

Islam is the official language of Malaysia, whose population is 61% Muslim, 20% Buddhist, 9% Christian, and 6% Hindu. About half of Christians in the Southeast Asian nation are catholic.








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