Against Pakatan’s stand, Haron Din maintains ‘Allah’ only for Muslims
(MM) – PAS leader Datuk Haron Din has insisted that “Allah” belongs exclusively to Islam, contradicting Pakatan Rakyat’s (PR) official stand that non-Muslims have the right to use the Arabic word to describe their god.
The Islamist party’s deputy spiritual leader was quoted by Utusan Malaysia as saying that the Christians, who believed in “several gods”, had no right to use “Allah” as the Arabic word meant “God All Mighty” or “The Only God”.
“Those who transform Allah into three or two or anything else then the Allah term is damaged according to our understanding as well as their understanding,” Haron, who is currently in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, was quoted as saying.
“Therefore I invite all Muslims to express their gratitude to Allah because after a struggle that goes all the way up to the Court of Appeal, the sacred word Allah remains only for Islam.
“In other words, the sacred word is exclusively for Islam while the application of others have been prohibited by the courts,” he added.
The PAS leader was also reported to have warned Muslims that the battle for “Allah” is yet to end as the Christians are set to challenge the ruling in the Federal Court.
Haron also expected the legal battle to drag on into the international arena.
“There remains one more battle arena left that is the Federal Court. Maybe there will be instructions (to challenge the ruling) or maybe Malaysia will not be the battlefield to defend Allah.
“Instead it will go to the International Courts. Maybe all the way there. Whatever it is Muslims who understand Islam as the agama tauhid (the religion of truth) must defend the sacred word,” he was quoted as saying.
Yesterday the federal opposition bloc maintained its earlier view that non-Muslims can refer to God as “Allah”, after the Court of Appeal ruled otherwise on Monday.
The opposition pact, represented by PKR’s Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, DAP’s Lim Kit Siang and PAS’ Datuk Mustafa Ali, said that it upheld its support for non-Muslims, as previously declared in January this year.
“We remain consistent with what we said earlier,” Anwar told reporters at a joint press conference with Lim and Mustafa.
On Monday, the Court of Appeal ruled against a 2009 High Court decision allowing the Catholic Church to refer to the Christian god with the Arabic word “Allah” in the Bahasa Malaysia section of its weekly paper, the Herald.
The court adjudged the usage of the word “Allah” as not integral to the Christian faith and said that allowing such an application would cause confusion in the Muslim community.
The ruling was censured in several international publications, such as Indonesian daily Jakarta Post, which wrote an editorial yesterday saying that “those who claim exclusivity to God undermine their own faith, and inadvertently or not, preach polytheism”.
International current affairs magazine The Economist pointed out yesterday that Christians in the Middle East commonly refer to God as “Allah”, and called the court verdict an “unhelpful contribution” to religious discourse between Muslims and Christians.
