Of Allah and the state of Malaysia

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Oct 29, 2013

(Al Jazeera) – Ruling on use of word ‘Allah’ shows a worrying state of affairs that, left unchecked, may be disastrous for Malaysia.

Earlier this month, the Malaysian Court of Appeal upheld an administrative direction by the government prohibiting the Catholic Church of Malaysia from using the word “Allah” to denote “God” in the Malay version of the Church’s newsletter, The Herald.

The government asserts that the direction, along with a condition that the newsletter was only to be circulated among members of the Catholic Church, is aimed at preserving public order. The unimpeded use of the word “Allah” by the church, it explains, will result in confusion among Muslims.

The ruling was handed down in a controversial appeal brought by the government against a lauded 2009 decision of the first court striking down the prohibition as unreasonable for, among other things, it not being reconcilable with the long history of the use of the word by Christians in Malaya (later Malaysia), and the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, expression and association. It was also, in the mind of the court, irrational in light of the word “Allah” being freely used to denote God in the Malay translation of the Bible.

One Malaysia? Not so much

That the government felt it necessary to appeal the ruling in the first place was questionable. The government, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak, had spent much time, effort and money in a branding exercise, centred on the use of the slogan “1Malaysia”, to showcase itself as a moderate and inclusive government. “1Malaysia”, in Najib’s view, was the blueprint for a participatory democracy that would be the envy of others. Justifiably, questions arose as to why it was necessary to pursue an appeal against a decision that did nothing more than state the obvious.

It would seem that the appeal was not prompted by concerns about the state of public order, Malaysia has, after all, shown itself more than capable of dealing with actual threats in the past. The fact that the government has in the wake of the decision of the Court of Appeal clarified that the prohibition only applies to The Herald and not to other publications, including the Malay version of the Bible, undermines any assertion that the national security of the country would be threatened by the unimpeded use of the word.

The initial ruling, and other hard-won decisions on various aspects of religious freedom, would not have been welcomed as landmark decisions if that were the case.

Rather, the decision of the government appears to have been a strategic appeal to the ethnocentric sentiments of a Malay, and as such Muslim, majority voter base in a move that Malaysians have come to recognise as a leaf out of the playbook of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the political party which Najib heads and which has led the coalition government that has ruled since independence.