Pardon me, but this is absolutely asinine. Next it will be that you can not call God, Father, in the Christian churches because He is not biologically connected. With all the needs in Malaysia, and the tinder box they have in the Muslim community already, who would have thought they could find more ridiculous things to write a 100+ page brief on than some of the drivel our parliamentarians occupy themselves with?
Come to think of it, we better make sure Congress does not find out about this, or they will filibuster that Muslims are not allowed to use Allah (swt) in services in the states since it is not English.....Sr. Amira
On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 2:57 AM, <pbjflorida@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Group: http://groups.google.com/group/pbjflorida/topics
Abhinav Dwivedi <abhinavd45@hotmail.com> Oct 18 09:19AM -0400
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No more 'Allah' for Christians, Malaysian court says
***************************************
A court in Malaysia ruled that the Arabic-derived word for 'God' in
Malaysian - Allah - can't be used by the nation's Christians.
*********************************************************************
Courtesy: The Christian Science Monitor, October 14, 2013
****************************************************
Kuala Lumpur
In the latest round of a divisive political and religious saga, a Malaysian
court ruled Monday that the word "Allah" can only be used by the country's
Muslim majority, overturning a previous decision that allowed other faiths
using the term to denote "God" in their local-language services and
scriptures.
This morning Malaysia's Court of Appeals issued an expansive ruling that
sparked surprise and anger throughout the country. At the court in
Malaysia's administrative capital Putrajaya, Justice Mohamed Apandi read a
brief summary of the 100+ page judgment. "Our common finding is that the
usage of Allah is not an integral part of the Christian faith. We cannot
find why the parties are so adamant on the usage of the word," he said.
"Allah" has been used in Christian worship among Malay speakers for
centuries, much as it's used by Arab-speaking Christians and Christians in
Indonesia, where the national language is a close cousin of Malaysian,
without any controversy. The word passed into local languages over six
centuries ago, as Arab traders plied Southeast Asia's seas.
But in recent years Christian use of the word has become a political
football in Malaysia, with an argument's that it's part of a stealth
conversion campaign by the country's Catholic and Protestant minority used
as a form of identity politics.
The decision, which came at the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage, was
officially based on the government's argument that allowing non-Muslims to
continue to use the word could rile up Muslim hardliners and help Christians
to proselytize. But Malaysia experts say the ruling, which follows a May
election in which the ruling National Front coalition lost the popular vote
for the first time (though it retained power), was sought to firm up
political support among the country's ethnic Malay and mostly-Muslim
majority.
The election turned on the fight for the rural Malay Muslim vote, with the
National Front's faith and fatherland pitch a key factor in swaying that
segment of the electorate. Rural votes returned the government to power even
as it lost the election in urban areas.
Mohamed Bin Nawab Mohammed Osman of Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore says that the ruling is "an attempt by the government to assuage
the insecurities of the Malay community about Islam's supreme position in
the country."
Malaysia's politics have turned on ethnic identity since independence. For
decades, the government's New Economic Policy provided preferences in
government contracting and education to the Malay majority, under the
argument that the country's significant ethnic-Chinese and Indian minorities
had an economic leg up on the Malays during British rule. The largest party
in the National Front is called the United Malay National Organization
(UMNO), and has usually governed with ethnic-Chinese and Indian-based
parties as its junior partners.
The "Allah issue" came up during the latest election campaign, with the
opposition saying Christians should be allowed to use "Allah." The Front
countered that an opposition win would diminish Islam, and political
analysts say it was a successful wedge issue in driving ethnic-Malays to the
polls.
UMNO is a nationalist party, not a religiously based one. And the country's
largest Islamist party, the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party is opposed to
denying Christians and other religious minorities a word that's long been
common in their worship.
Lawrence Andrew is a Catholic priest and editor of The Herald, a Catholic
newsletter. The Herald won a 2009 judgement giving it permission to use
Allah in local language publications after a decade-long legal battle.
<http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2010/0420/Should-Christians-be-
allowed-to-say-Allah-in-Malaysia> That ruling was overturned today. "We will
appeal this ruling and no doubt this statement by the court will be a part
of it," Andrews told the Monitor, speaking outside the Court of Appeals.
While it was expected that the court would rule against The Herald, the
wording has taken people aback. "It was surprising in the global sense as
Allah has been used by Christians to refer to God around the world," says Ei
Sun Oh, a former advisor to Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak.
But the ruling is not a surprise "in the Malaysian sense," he says. Around 6
out 10 Malaysians are Muslim. The remainder are a mix of Buddhist,
Christian, Hindu and Sikh. By law, all Malays - the majority ethnic group
from which the country's name derives - are Muslims and subject to Islamic
law.
But Malaysia is a country of many beliefs and tribes, with around a quarter
of the 29 million population of Chinese descent. Another seven per cent are
of Indian, usually Tamil, descent. Most Chinese-Malaysians voted for the
opposition in the last election, sparking allegations of "treachery" by
pro-government newspapers. And in recent weeks the government has reneged on
pre-election pledges to cut back on the long-standing pro-Malay subsidies
and preferential treatment in areas like education that have alienated
minority groups, particularly the Chinese-Malaysians.
Monday's ruling will likely be seen as another example of official
favoritism towards ethnic Malays. "The rest of the world will be curious
about the decision but as they say, Malaysian Muslims are unique since Islam
is tied constitutionally to a definition of an ethnic group," says James
Chin, a politics Professor at Monash University's Malaysia campus.
--
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