Allah dispute not about God
by Bob Teoh
On the surface, the 'Allah' issue seems to be a fight over one word but it is much more than that.
It is not about religion itself or about God, but about fundamental issues confronting the nation.
- It is about the constitutional guarantee to our civil liberties such as the freedom of speech, association and religion.
- It is about our right to seek judicial recourse when the Government makes bad decisions affecting our constitutional rights.
- It is about the duty of the judicary to overturn any bad decision made by the Government.
- It's about ensuring that the Syariah judiciary remains subordinate to the civil court according to the Federal Constitution.
- It's about defining the boundaries for the exercise of power by the Malay Rulers and the King and defining their roles in Islam and Muslims and non-Muslims.
There are continuing attempts to mislead the public with wild and unsubstantiated allegations that both the Catholic Church and the Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB) Sabah as well as Christians in general are being unnecessarily confrontational by refusing to settle their case out of court.
They are also accused of disrespecting Islam as the official religion and the Sultans as custodians of the faith. Christians are also accused of trying to convert Malays by confusing them by using 'Allah'. The opposite seems to be true. Berita Harian on Feb 24, 2009 quoted Sabah's Governor Tun Ahmadshah Abdullah as saying there had been 117,579 new converts registered with Majlis Ugama Islam Sabah since 1970.
Another silly accusation is that the Government should not have allowed a Chinese judge to hear the Herald case (filed by the Catholic Church). This suggestion is an affront to any judge's dignity. Following the Catholic Church's Herald case, Sisters in Islam (SIS) was also successful in its application for a judicial review over the Home Minister's decision to ban their book, "Muslim Women & the Challenges of Islamic Extremism."
The book was published in 2005 and had been freely sold for over two years until it was banned by the minister under section 7(1) of the Printing Presses & Publications Act 1984. A Malay judge heard their complaint and came to the same decision as the Chinese judge that the Government had exceeded its power and had acted wrongly under the same law.
Commenting on the judgment in The Star (Feb 10), Shad Saleem Faruqi, Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM and Visiting Professor at USM, said if one looks at the Act literally, the minister's discretion is absolute. Despite this, he said Justice Mohamad Ariff Md Yusof held that the minister's discretion is not to be regarded as final.
"There are serious questions of constitutionality about those provisions of the Printing Presses Act that confer on the minister a number of absolute discretions," he said.
The 'Allah' word problem arose after Dr Mahathir Mohamad banned the Al Kitab or the Bahasa Bible in December 1981 by a gazette order. Soon after that, he became Prime Minister. When Christian leaders complained, the Government, by another gazette order a few months later, allowed the Al Kitab to be used but only in churches.
But then the Home Ministry began their harassment by confiscating the Al Kitab and other Bahasa Christian publications, apparently because they were found outside church premises at ports and airports on the way to churches which imported them. Printing of such publications locally was also difficult because printers were intimidated.
Again the churches complained and the Government formed a Cabinet sub-committee headed by the late Deputy Prime Minister, Tun Ghafar Baba, who attempted to resolve the matter by issuing another decree in 1986. On top of the restricted use of the Al Kitab (in churches), the Cabinet also decreed that the word 'Allah' could not be used by Christians. Instead of solving the problem, the decree created even more problems.
During former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi's premiership, the Bup Kudus - the Iban Bible which uses the word 'Allah Taala' - was banned. The Ibans were furious and the Government relented. Despite this, the confiscation of the Al Kitab and Bahasa Christian publications persisted. Recently, 20,000 copies of the Al Kitab were detained at various entry points to the country.
The deadlock over the 'Allah' word prohibition then forced both the Catholic Church and the SIB Sabah to take their cause to the courts. The two cases are still stuck in the court.
In the Herald case, Justice Datuk Lau Bee Lan in her judgment (Dec 31, 2009) said the Senior Federal Counsel's contention that according to S13a of the Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984, the Minister's decision "shall be final and shall not be called into question in any court on any ground whatsoever" is misconceived.
"I find the Minister in the exercise of his discretion to impose further conditions in the publication permit has not taken into account the relevant matters, hence committing an error of law warranting this Court to interfere and I am of the view the Minister and Government's decision ought to be quashed," she said.
Justice Lau made it clear that what was under judicial review was whether the Government had made a wrong decision under the printing law. The question of Islam as the official religion and the Sultans' role in it were not under review, and therefore it had nothing to do with the Herald case.
The dispute over the Allah word is three decades old and has dragged on through three prime mnisters. It's time to move on. Like Dr Mahathir said, the matter cannot be resolved by the courts. Such crises can be best avoided through an inter-faith mechanism and not by absolute decrees. |
