KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) – A Malaysian court ruled on Wednesday that non-Muslims can use the word “Allah” to refer to God in an important decision on a controversial issue for religious freedom in the country of Muslim majority.
Two ethnic Malaysian political parties expressed concern immediately and on Thursday urged the government to challenge the decision.
The Supreme Court found a 35-year government ban on the use of Allah and three other Arabic words by Christian publications unconstitutional, said the plaintiff’s lawyer, Annou Xavier.
The government had previously said that Allah should be reserved exclusively for Muslims to avoid confusion that could lead them to convert to other religions, a stance that is unique to Malaysia and has not been a problem in other Muslim-majority nations with Christian minorities. considerable.
Christian leaders in Malaysia say the ban is irrational because Christians who speak the Malay language have long used Allah, a Malay word derived from Arabic, in their Bibles, prayers and songs.
The higher court’s decision seemed to contradict an earlier decision by the country’s Federal Court in 2014, which maintained the government’s ban after a legal challenge from the Roman Catholic Church, which had used the word Allah in its Malay newsletter.
“The court said that the word Allah can be used by all Malaysians,” said Xavier. “Today’s decision enshrines the fundamental freedom of religious rights for non-Muslims in Malaysia,” enshrined in the constitution, he added.
Muslims represent about two-thirds of Malaysia’s 32 million inhabitants, with large ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities. Christians represent about 10% of the population.
Most Christians in Malaysia worship in English, Tamil or various Chinese dialects and refer to God in those languages, but some people who speak Malay on the island of Borneo have no other word for God than Allah.
Three other words – “kaabah” or the most sacred sanctuary of Islam in Mecca, “baitullah” or the house of God and “solat” or prayer, were also banned in the 1986 government directive.
The United Malays National Organization and the conservative Islamic Party in a joint statement said they viewed the court’s decision with concern and demanded that the government take the case to the Court of Appeals. Interior Ministry officials could not be reached immediately for comment.
The government ban was introduced under the government of a coalition led by UMNO, but the coalition was overthrown in the historic elections of 2018. UMNO returned to rule under a new Malaysian-dominated government last year, after a series of political maneuvers.
The government’s lawyer, Shamsul Bolhassan, was quoted by The Star newspaper as saying that the four words can be used in Christian materials according to the court’s decision, as long as it clearly states that they are meant only for Christians and that a symbol of a cross is displayed.
The decision was the result of a long legal challenge by a Christian woman whose religious materials containing the word Allah were seized by authorities at the airport when she returned home from Indonesia in 2008.
The controversy over the use of Allah has sparked violence in Malaysia. Anger at a first instance court’s decision against the government’s ban in 2009 led to a series of arson attacks and vandalism in churches and other places of worship. That decision was later overturned by higher courts.