Situating the ‘Allah’ case in perspective

Jul 05, 2014

By S. Selvarajah
The word ‘Allah’ is used in the Malay section of the HERALD. to refer to God. The Home Affairs Minister issued an order, a ministerial order, prohibiting the use of the word by the Catholic publication on the grounds that the word is exclusive to Islam and it can only be used by Muslims.

So the publisher of the HERALD, who is the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur, challenged the decision of the minister by a procedure known as judicial review on the grounds that the minister’s exercise of his discretion in prohibiting the word was wrong in law, unconstitutional, unreasonable, illegal and one that exceeded his powers.

The High Court held in favour of the publisher and quashed the decision of the minister. That decision was delivered on Dec 31, 2009.

Three years later, the Appeal Court set aside the High Court judgement on the grounds that the High Court judge was wrong and upheld the prohibition of the Home Minister.

Subsequently, the publisher applied for leave to appeal to the Federal Court, which is the highest court, and the decision was delivered by a seven-member panel headed by the Chief Justice himself. Four judges ruled in dismissing the leave application and three judges dissented. The ultimate effect is that we lost by a 4-3 margin.

We are extremely disappointed with this decision. We have always held the view that the judge of the High Court was correct in allowing the use of the word and of course we were hoping that the highest court would grant leave to the publisher to have the case heard on it’s merit.

There is a provision for review of the Federal Court decision: a provision which is very rarely invoked, and rarely successful, but we intend to exhaust all legal avenues to try and persuade the court that they erred in refusing leave.

Of course the decision has far reaching consequences because it applies beyond the HERALD publication. The decision can be construed as prohibiting all non-Muslims from using the word ‘Allah’ in other spheres, not just in magazines but in religious books, articles, educational books and so on.

So this ruling affects all non-muslim religious texts.

Technically, non-Muslims who use the word ‘Allah’ can be charged. There are nine states in Malaysia which have state enactments prohibiting the use of the word ‘Allah’. We construe those provisions to mean using the word to propagate Christianity among Muslims. That would be an offence. But not if the word is used among members of the same community. The Malay bible, the Alkitab, which uses the word ‘Allah’ is distributed only among Christians. It can only be purchased in restricted places like the church or religious bookshops. So the fear that this word is used by Christians to convert Muslims is unfounded.

Right now with this decision, the Muslim authorities will go about seizing publications which contain this word. And that is the danger.

Of course the East Malaysians Christians will continue to use the word and I don’t think they will pay much attention to this decision as they have been using the word for generations.