‘Allah’ debate exposes country’s fault lines
KUALA LUMPUR: The public debate over the use of the word “Allah” is exposing the widening religious fault lines racking multiracial Malaysia.
Demonstrations are being planned by Muslim-based political parties, non-governmental organisations and student bodies to denounce a High Court ruling which declared that the Catholic Church's weekly paper could use “Allah” to refer to God.
Amid this din, SMSes are being circulated, quietly cautioning Christians to be careful.
But trouble is unlikely.
The Court of Appeal will very likely convene soon and is widely expected to overturn the lower court's decision.
And political temperatures will subside with warnings from right-wing political and religious groups that Muslim Malay pride should never again be challenged.
The High Court yesterday granted a stay on its own ruling that the Catholic Church's weekly Herald can publish the word “Allah” to refer to God in the Bahasa Malaysia section.
But the political and economic costs for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's administration will linger for much longer.
The controversy also presents challenges for the country's opposition, which staged an impressive performance in the 2008 general election because of strong support from the country's Malay Muslim community.
For starters, analysts and diplomats said the episode is likely to reinforce the notion among the country's sizeable non-Muslim population that their religious rights are slowly being chipped away in the face of growing Islamisation promoted by the Barisan Nasional (BN) government.
That is sure to complicate Najib's uphill battle to woo back the country's non-Malays, who voted against the government in droves in the last general election.
It will also represent a significant setback to the central theme of his new administration — the “1 Malaysia” policy which is designed to bring the country's multiracial and multi-religious communities together.
Issues of race and religion are central to politics, but public controversies over these sensitive matters have increased in frequency in recent years as parties turn more to the country's courts to defend their rights.
The seeds of the “Allah” controversy were sown in 2007 when the then Home Affairs Minister Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar ordered the Catholic Church to stop using the word in its weekly paper.
The Catholic Church challenged the ban and on New Year's Eve, High Court judge Datuk Lau Bee Lan ruled that Christians “have a constitutional right to use Allah''.
The ruling ignited a storm of criticism among many Muslims, including ultra elements within Umno — which is desperately trying to regain its political dominance after suffering its worst electoral setback in history in 2008.
The Umno-led BN lost its customary two-thirds majority in Parliament because the coalition was rejected by large sections of the non-Malay population and the country's majority Malays who voted in favour of an opposition alliance.
The alliance comprises the fundamentalist PAS, the Malay- dominated but multiracial PKR headed by former deputy premier Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the Chinese- dominated DAP.
Many analysts and diplomats believe that this controversy over the use of the word “Allah” forces the country's Malay-based opposition leaders into an awkward corner.
Backing Umno's demands for Muslim exclusivity in the use of the word would risk alienating the non-Malay ground, while failure to support the campaign could offend the country's Muslim Malay majority.
For the moment, the country's main Islamic opposition party has spurned Umno.
After a three-hour meeting on Monday, PAS president Datuk Hadi Awang declared that the party would back the use of the word “Allah” by the country's Christians, arguing that it was consistent with the Constitution and Islamic principles.
“PAS would like to state that based on Islamic principles, the use of the word 'Allah' by the people of the Abrahamic faiths such as Christianity and Judaism, is acceptable,” Hadi said in a written statement.
PAS officials concede that the decision by the leadership may not go down well with the party's rank-and-file and the wider Muslim community.
At the end of the day, it seems everyone is caught in a pickle — The Straits Times
KUALA LUMPUR: The public debate over the use of the word “Allah” is exposing the widening religious fault lines racking multiracial Malaysia.
Demonstrations are being planned by Muslim-based political parties, non-governmental organisations and student bodies to denounce a High Court ruling which declared that the Catholic Church's weekly paper could use “Allah” to refer to God.
Amid this din, SMSes are being circulated, quietly cautioning Christians to be careful.
But trouble is unlikely.
The Court of Appeal will very likely convene soon and is widely expected to overturn the lower court's decision.
And political temperatures will subside with warnings from right-wing political and religious groups that Muslim Malay pride should never again be challenged.
The High Court yesterday granted a stay on its own ruling that the Catholic Church's weekly Herald can publish the word “Allah” to refer to God in the Bahasa Malaysia section.
But the political and economic costs for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak's administration will linger for much longer.
The controversy also presents challenges for the country's opposition, which staged an impressive performance in the 2008 general election because of strong support from the country's Malay Muslim community.
For starters, analysts and diplomats said the episode is likely to reinforce the notion among the country's sizeable non-Muslim population that their religious rights are slowly being chipped away in the face of growing Islamisation promoted by the Barisan Nasional (BN) government.
That is sure to complicate Najib's uphill battle to woo back the country's non-Malays, who voted against the government in droves in the last general election.
It will also represent a significant setback to the central theme of his new administration — the “1 Malaysia” policy which is designed to bring the country's multiracial and multi-religious communities together.
Issues of race and religion are central to politics, but public controversies over these sensitive matters have increased in frequency in recent years as parties turn more to the country's courts to defend their rights.
The seeds of the “Allah” controversy were sown in 2007 when the then Home Affairs Minister Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar ordered the Catholic Church to stop using the word in its weekly paper.
The Catholic Church challenged the ban and on New Year's Eve, High Court judge Datuk Lau Bee Lan ruled that Christians “have a constitutional right to use Allah''.
The ruling ignited a storm of criticism among many Muslims, including ultra elements within Umno — which is desperately trying to regain its political dominance after suffering its worst electoral setback in history in 2008.
The Umno-led BN lost its customary two-thirds majority in Parliament because the coalition was rejected by large sections of the non-Malay population and the country's majority Malays who voted in favour of an opposition alliance.
The alliance comprises the fundamentalist PAS, the Malay- dominated but multiracial PKR headed by former deputy premier Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the Chinese- dominated DAP.
Many analysts and diplomats believe that this controversy over the use of the word “Allah” forces the country's Malay-based opposition leaders into an awkward corner.
Backing Umno's demands for Muslim exclusivity in the use of the word would risk alienating the non-Malay ground, while failure to support the campaign could offend the country's Muslim Malay majority.
For the moment, the country's main Islamic opposition party has spurned Umno.
After a three-hour meeting on Monday, PAS president Datuk Hadi Awang declared that the party would back the use of the word “Allah” by the country's Christians, arguing that it was consistent with the Constitution and Islamic principles.
“PAS would like to state that based on Islamic principles, the use of the word 'Allah' by the people of the Abrahamic faiths such as Christianity and Judaism, is acceptable,” Hadi said in a written statement.
PAS officials concede that the decision by the leadership may not go down well with the party's rank-and-file and the wider Muslim community.
At the end of the day, it seems everyone is caught in a pickle — The Straits Times
07/01/2010
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