Say sorry for ‘heinous’ stamping of Bibles, BSM tells Selangor’s Islamic authorities

(Malay Mail Online) – The Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM) demanded today an apology from Selangor ‘s Islamic religious bodies for stamping a warning on some 300 Bibles containing the word “Allah” it had recently returned.

BSM president Bishop Datuk Ng Moon Hing said the stamp had sullied the Christian holy books and denounced it as a “heinous” and a “despicable action”.

“It does not matter to us which level of government is responsible for this heinous and despicable action.

“The fact remains that the Bibles have been desecrated and the Christian minority in this country has been made to suffer at the hands of religious zealots and extremists working within the government.

“We demand an apology from the Selangor state religious authorities for desecrating our Holy Scriptures, let alone the raid on our premises early this year,” he said in a strongly-worded statement.

The latest stamping storm is not the first incident; two similar cases have been reported taking place in the last few years.

In 2011, 5,100 copies of Malay-language Bibles seized at the Port Klang in Pakatan Rakyat-led Selangor were stamped with the Home Ministry’s official seal.

Months later, 30,000 Al-kitab seized by the Home Ministry at the Kuching Port in Barisan Nasional-held Sarawak were also stamped with the government’s seal without the importer’s consent.

The Bibles in Malay were returned as part of the 10-point solution that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had agreed with Sarawak church representatives prior to the state elections.

Ng said the latest revelation has “seriously undermined and undone” the Selangor sultan’s efforts to bring the issue to a resolution.

On November 14, Selangor’s Islamic Religious Department (Jais) returned the 351 holy books seized to the Association of Churches of Sarawak (ACS), which was witnessed by the sultan.

It is unclear what had caused the delay for the new revelation to surface.

Malay Mail Online understands that BSM leaders who are based in the peninsula were only informed of the allegedly defaced Bibles recently.

Today, Ng also said the religious authorities can invoke laws to restrict religious freedom but “at the end of the day, they lack the moral authority”.

“For as long as the right of religious minorities to worship God using whatever name they choose, to publish and distribute religious texts in whatever language they desire, and to share their faith and religious expressions to whomever wants to listen, is controlled and curtailed, there cannot be true religious freedom for all adherents of any religion.

“Governments can legislate letter of the law, but can never suppress the spirit of the soul,” he said.

Azmin Ali who was appointed Selangor mentri besar just three months ago has been largely credited for the return of the Bibles seized in early January; however he refused to elaborate on the issue when asked.

Both Azmin and de facto PKR head Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had spoken at a joint Deepavali-Christmas celebration at a Catholic church in Kajang earlier today.

Controversy over non-Muslim use of “Allah” first erupted when the Catholic Church initiated a legal suit against the federal government after it was first banned from publishing the Arabic word for God in the Bahasa Malaysia section of its weekly newspaper, Herald, in 2007.

Christianity is the third-biggest religion after Islam and Buddhism.

The issue has become a religious flashpoint in a country where the line between creed and ethnicity is often blurred.