The David Copperfield of Malaysian Law: Law today, gone tomorrow
Were we all not amazed when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear? The jaws of the world dropped – literary – at such magical feat. How did he do it? Perhaps David Copperfield was actually gifted with powers of the supernatural. Perhaps he dabbled in the occult.
But then, what is that compared to the kuasa sakti of our Home Minister, Syed Hamid Albar. With the flicker of his magical Harry Potter pen, he made law disappear. On January 21, he signed a directive under the Internal Security Act by way of gazette, allowing the conditional use of the word “Allah” in Christian publications. The gazette came into effect on February 16. On March 1, Syed Hamid Albar said that he would issue a fresh gazette to rescind the earlier gazette – the reason being – there were “mistakes” made in the drafting of the Feb 16 gazette.
This issue is in relation to the usage by the Catholic Church of the word “Allah” in their publication – the Catholic Herald. A legal suit was filed in the Kuala Lumpur High Court to challenge the ban by the government. In a surprising turn of event, Syed Hamid Albar issued the gazette allowing the use of the word “Allah”, provided there is a disclaimer to the effect that the words “For Christians” were clearly printed on the publications. But of course, this decision is now reversed, by reason of mistake.
