There is no religious freedom for the people of Borneo Sabah and Sarawak after all. The people here have been victimized and marginalized long ago. Now our Sabahan and Sarawakian basic rights to religious freedom are taken away as well, together with our oil and gas revenues. Fight, we must!
The High Court today rejected the bid by Christian denomination Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB) to get leave application for judicial review to challenge the seizure of its religious books in 2007, saying the word "Allah" was not integral to Christianity.
Judge Datuk Zaleha Yusof said she was bound by the Court of Appeal ruling in the case of Catholic weekly Herald, that the word "Allah" cannot be used in the Christian publication.
In an immediate reaction, one of SIB's lawyers Annou Xavier (pic) said that this was a dangerous situation for freedom to practise one's faith in Malaysia.
He said that when the Court of Appeal ruled against Herald in October, Christian cabinet ministers from East Malaysia had come out to say that the ruling was limited to the use of the word "Allah" in Herald in Peninsular Malaysia.
"So the fact the High Court judge has ruled against this Sabah body today is a very dangerous precedent which is using the Court of Appeal decision that the word Allah is not integral to Christianity as a benchmark," Annou said.
Although the seized books, which were brought in from Indonesia, had been released, SIB had sought a declaration from the court that its congregation has the constitutional right to use the word “Allah” in all its religious publications and materials.
SIB also wanted a declaration that its congregation, a majority of whom are Bahasa Malaysia-speaking natives, is entitled to own, possess, use and import materials including those which contain the word “Allah”.
SIB (Sabah) president Rev Datuk Jerry Dusing said in view of the importance and wide implications of the case, he has instructed the church’s lawyers to appeal against today's decision.
The controversy over the use of "Allah" by non-Muslims dates back to the 1980s, when several states and their Muslim fatwa committees passed laws forbidding several Arabic terms by non-Muslims.
These include the 1988 Selangor enactment and the 1986 decree by the National Fatwa Council.
However, the laws were not widely enforced until 2008 when the Home Ministry banned Herald from using the word "Allah" in the Bahasa Malaysia section of the publication.
The term is used by Christians who worship in Bahasa Malaysia and Iban language, such as the indigenous groups in Sabah and Sarawak.
In January 2009, the High Court overturned the Home Ministry's ban, but was later upheld by the Court of Appeal in October last year when it ruled that "Allah" was not integral to Christianity.
The church then appealed to the Federal Court, which has reserved judgement.
The case has added to growing concerns over issues of religious freedom in the country. Malaysia has been recently placed on a watch list by an advisory body of the US government over concerns about its limitation on freedom of religion.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its 2014 annual report that the intertwining of religion, ethnicity, and politics in Malaysia complicated religious freedom protections for religious minorities.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Important - The views expressed and the links provided on our comment pages are the personal views of individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sabah Report.