Muslim-Christian strife on your head, Perkasa and Jati tell Vatican envoy
(MM) – Two self-declared defenders of Islam warned Christians today against provoking Muslims more with any further statement on their right to call their god “Allah”.
Datuk Hasan Ali and Datuk Ibrahim Ali, the heads of Malay groups Jalur Tiga (Jati) and Perkasa respectively, demanded the Holy See’s representative, Archbishop Joseph Marino, retract his recent remarks on the “Allah” controversy, saying Muslim Malaysians will not brook non-Muslim encroachment into their religion’s affairs.
The two group leaders said they would hand in a memorandum of their dissatisfaction to the apostolic nuncio, or papal envoy, as a last warning not to interfere with Malaysia’s Islamic affairs.
Hasan went a step further however, saying that Jati would not accept any apology or any act to smooth over the storm that has reignited.
“The memorandum will serve as our first action… we will not accept any apologies or any act to mitigate the problem,” Hasan told a news conference at his home that fringes the leafy suburban enclave of Taman Tun Dr Ismail here.
“There will be more follow-up actions and we will stand up against anyone who will cause religious strife regardless of who, be it Marino or anyone,” he added.
His Perkasa ally Ibrahim added that Marino would be held responsible for any potential flare-up between Muslims and Christians here.
Hasan, a former Selangor PAS commissioner who had been sacked from the Islamist party last year, pronounced that Islam will declare any Muslim who defends his or her faith as “mati syahid” or a martyr who has earned a place in heaven for protecting Islam.
“So you can get the picture of how serious this matter is,” he said.
In his first media interview here last Thursday, Marino, the Vatican’s first envoy to Malaysia, observed that the “Allah” storm that has been raging here for the past five years was unique to this Southeast Asian nation due to the widespread use of the Malay language, the lingua franca of Malaysia’s Bumiputera Christians.
The apostolic nuncio indicated that the local churches have presented a “logical and acceptable” argument to counter the allegations by some hardline Muslims here that “Allah”, a word of Middle Eastern origin, was exclusive to Islam.
“But the document that they produce seems to be very well-presented in terms of explaining why Christians use this word,” the apostolic nuncio said, referring to the Christian Federation of Malaysia’s (CFM) fact sheet on the “Allah” released a couple of months ago.
Marino was careful to point out that the ongoing appeal by the Home Ministry to reverse a 2009 High Court judgment in favour of the Catholic Church was an “internal matter” when asked to comment further on the dispute.
