Crowd outside Putrajaya court awaits ruling on “Allah” issue

(The Star) – The mood outside the Palace of Justice court complex remained tense as practitioners of the Muslim and Christian faiths awaited the outcome of the “Allah” issue expected to be revealed at about 3pm.

The Court of Appeal Thursday was hearing the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur’s application to strike out the government’s appeal against a High Court ruling that allowed a Catholic weekly newspaper Herald to use the word “Allah”.

To maintain order in proceedings, the court officials handed out entry passes which ran out by 8am.

Spectators, which included media, lawyers, priests and Muslim religious bodies, waited outside in anticipation of the decision. Court officials occasionally had to shush the crowd when it got too rowdy.

Dozens more stayed outside the court complex, and were occasionally heard chanting religious slogans.

The three-person panel lead by Justice Abu Samah Nordin, and including Justices Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim and Rohana Yusuf, were hearing submissions by the Church, Government and the Islamic religious councils from the states of Terengganu, Selangor, Kedah, Johor, Wilayah Persekutuan and Malacca, which were made interveners in the suit.

The Home Ministry and the government are appealing against the Dec 31, 2009 High Court decision that allowed the church’s judicial review to lift the Ministry’s ban on the use of the word “Allah” in the “Herald” to refer to the Christian god.

The church, led by Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, filed the judicial review on Feb 16, 2009, naming the Home Ministry and the government as respondents.

They sought, among others, a declaration that the decision by the Home Ministry on Jan 7, 2009, prohibiting the use of the word ‘Allah’ in the Herald was illegal and that the word ‘Allah’ is not exclusive to the religion of Islam.

The weekly, published in four languages, has been using the word ‘Allah’ as a translation for ‘God’ in its Malay-language section, but the government argued that ‘Allah’ should be used exclusively only by Muslims.