Catholic weekly can't use word 'Allah': court
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Catholic weekly The Herald will not be allowed to use the word "Allah" to refer to the Christian God, ruled the Court of Appeal.
The panel, chaired by Justice Mohamed Apandi Ali, overturned a High Court decision and unanimously ruled yesterday in favour of the government’s appeal.
The court set aside all orders made by the Kuala Lumpur High Court in conjunction with its allowing the Church’s judicial review back in 2009, with no order as to costs.
The panel included justices Mohamed Zawawi Salleh and Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahim, each of whom prepared their own judgements, though Justice Ali read a brief summary, saying the full judgement was more than 100 pages long.
“Our common finding is that the usage of Allah is not an integral part of the Christian faith. We cannot find why the parties are so adamant on the usage of the word,” he said.
The court found that such usage of the word would cause confusion and that in the interest of public safety, chose to grant the government’s appeal.
“The welfare of an individual or group must yield to the interest of society at large,” said Ali, adding that this should be read alongside the constitutional freedom of religion.
Senior federal counsel Suzanna Atan represented the government, while lawyers Porres Royan and Annou Xavier acted as counsel for the Church.
Xavier told reporters that they will only be able to confirm in several days time whether the Church would appeal to the Federal Court.
The Home Ministry and government were appealing against the December 31, 2009, High Court decision in allowing 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.
On July 9, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur had filed an application to strike out the government’s appeal although it was later unanimously denied by another Court of Appeal panel.
The Church, led by Archbishop Murphy Pakiam, had filed the judicial review on February 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 January 7, 2009, prohibiting the use of the word “Allah” in The Herald was illegal and that the word 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.
