The country’s highest court has ruled that the Catholic newspaper The Herald has no grounds to appeal a lower court’s decision denying it the use of the word “Allah” to refer to God.
The seven-member bench at the Federal Court in Putrajaya arrived at a slim 4-3 majority decision denying the Catholic paper the right of appeal.
According to The Malay Mail Online‘s Joseph Sipalan, Justice Tun Arfiin Zakaria said, “The Court of Appeal was right to set aside the High Court Ruling,” to a packed courtroom this morning, upholding the lower court’s decision last year which overturned a high court ruling from 2009 allowing the paper to use the word as a constitutional right.
The decision puts an apparent end to the judicial fight The Herald has been waging since the Home Ministry banned the publication of the word “Allah” in the Bahasa Malaysia section of the newspaper in 2007.
Last October, the Court of Appeal ruled that “Allah” was not integral to the practice of the Christian faith and could confuse Muslims as well as threaten national security and public order.
The Catholic Church had argued in its case that Christians in Sabah and Sarawak had used the word to refer to God for centuries.
Following the appellate court’s ruling, the Catholic Church took the case to the Federal Court, leading to today’s ruling.
The move to take the matter to the Federal Court was opposed by nine respondents, namely the Home Ministry, the government, the Malaysian Chinese Muslim Association and the Islamic councils of six states.
The debate over Christians’ right to use the word “Allah” as part of their religious practices in Malaysia has led to numerous high-profile cases, including the bombing of several churches in 2010, and the seizure of over 300 Bahasa Malaysia Bibles containing the word “Allah” from the offices of the Bible Society of Malaysia by the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) on January 2.
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