The Malaysian High Court ruled Wednesday the nation’s Christians can use the word “Allah” for God in their prayers, texts, and religious services.
The March 10 decision that non-Muslims can use the word “Allah” to refer to God overturned a 35-year-old government ban on the usage of “Allah” and three other Arabic words in Christian publications.
Christian leaders in Malaysia have argued the ban was unreasonable because Christians who speak the Malay language have long used Allah — a Malay word for God derived from Arabic — in their Bibles, prayers, and songs.
The government had justified the ban as a means of preventing confusion that could lead Muslims to convert to other religions, a measure unique to Malaysia that has not been an issue in other Muslim-majority nations with significant Christian minorities.
Some 60 percent of Malaysia’s population of 28 million people are Muslim and Buddhism is the second largest religious group. Christians trail as the third largest religious group in the country with more than 2.6 million members, or just under 10 percent of the population.
Muslims protest outside a mosque in central Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Three Malaysian churches were attacked with firebombs, causing extensive damage to one, as Muslim worshippers pledged Friday to prevent Christians from using the word “Allah,” escalating religious tensions in this multi-racial country. Many of the country’s Malay Muslims, who make up 60 percent of the population, are incensed by a recent High Court decision to overturn a ban on Roman Catholics using “Allah” as a translation for God in the Malay-language edition of their main newspaper, the Herald. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
The court case resulting in Wednesday’s ruling harkens back to an incident in 2008, when authorities seized eight educational compact discs carried by Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill, a Christian originally from Sarawakian, when she landed in a Malaysian airport returning from Indonesia.
In 2014, the court declared that the seizure had been unlawful and the materials were returned to Lawrence Bill the following year, but the question of the use of the word “Allah” remained unresolved.
In the court’s decision this week, Judge Nor Bee Ariffin declared the ban on the word unconstitutional. The court also allowed the use of three previously forbidden words in Christian publications for educational purposes: Kaabah (Islam’s sacred shrine in Makkah), Baitullah (House of God), and Solat (prayer).
“Religious freedom is absolutely protected even in times of threat to public order,” the judge said.
Judge Ariffin also declared that a 1986 directive by the home ministry to bar Christians from using the four words represented an “illegality” and an “irrationality.”
Other controversial incidents have marked the affair over the years, such as the confiscation of around 300 Bibles in January 2014.
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