A Malaysian court has ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to God, even in their own faiths, overturning a 2009 lower court ruling.


The appeals court said the term Allah must be exclusive to Islam or it could cause public disorder.

People of all faiths use the word Allah in Malay to refer to their Gods.

Christians argue they have used the word, which entered Malay from Arabic, to refer to their God for centuries and that the ruling violates their rights.

One Malaysian Christian woman said the ruling would affect the community greatly.

"If we are prohibited from using the word Allah then we have to re-translate the whole Bible, if it comes to that," Ester Moiji from Sabah state told the BBC.

'Disappointed and dismayed'

The 2009 ruling sparked tensions, with churches and mosques attacked.

It came after the government said that a Catholic newspaper, The Herald, could not use the word in its Malay-language edition to describe the Christian God.

The newspaper sued, and a court ruled in their favour in December 2009. The government then launched an appeal.

Upholding the appeal on Monday, chief judge Mohamed Apandi Ali said: "The usage of the word Allah is not an integral part of the faith in Christianity. The usage of the word will cause confusion in the community."

The Herald editor Reverend Lawrence Andrew said he was "disappointed and dismayed", and would appeal against the decision.

"It is a retrograde step in the development of law in relation to the fundamental liberty of religious minorities," he said.

The newspaper's supporters have argued that Malay-language Bibles have used Allah to refer to the Christian God since before Malaysia was formed as a federal state in 1963.

"Allah is a term in the Middle East and in Indonesia it is a term both for Christians and Muslims. You cannot say that in all of the sudden it is not an integral part. Malay language is a language that has many borrowed words, Allah also is a borrowed word."

However, some Muslim groups have said that the Christian use of the word Allah could be used to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity.

Editor of Catholic Newspaper The Herald Lawrence Andrew: 'God is an integral part of every religion'

"Allah is not a Malay word. If they [non-Muslims] say they want to use a Malay word they should use Tuhan instead of Allah," Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar, a lawyer representing the government, told the BBC.

Dozens of churches and a few Muslim prayer halls were attacked and burned in the wake of the 2009 ruling, highlighting the intensity of feeling about issues of ethnicity and faith in Malaysia.

Some Malaysians believe the governing Malay-Muslim party is using the case to boost its Islamic credentials among voters, the BBC's Jennifer Pak reports from outside the court in Putrajaya.

Malay Muslims make up almost two-thirds of the country's population, but there are large Hindu and Christian communities.

Prime Minister Najib Razak's coalition won elections in May, but it was the coalition's worst result in more than half a century in power.

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Prosper Xt
Muhammad is never a prophet and
islam is not a religion but
anauthoritarian ideology used in 5th
century to fight for a throne
andrulership. If muhammad never
conquered his clan, kingdom
andgovernment, he wouldnt have had
any reverence in the worldtoday. So
when he succeeded he incorporated a
pagan mode ofworship in his doctrine.
He also plagiarize some aspect of the
holy scripture because his wife
khadijah was a christian.
Muhammad'snever knew his father
but he only recognise abdallah. So
hedestroyed all the 359 idols of his
adapted father abdallah, leavingout
one which is called allah. Remember
abdallah means "slave ofallah". The
word abdul is an arabic name meaning
"slave". The reasonmuslims say "allah
arkba" is because their allah should
remain absoluted and sovereign to any
other god, be it christian God orjewish
God, of even those destructed idols of
that time . The word"arkba" do not
mean great but greatest, so allah
became the"greatest" of the whole 360
idols. That is also why
muslim'sshahada is depicted as "La
ilah illah allah muhammad rasool
allah"meaning= There is no gods
(those destroyed 359 idols) but allah
(the one remaining left idol) and
muhammad is the messenger ofallah".
But muhammad left also the three
daughters of that "allah"which includes
allat, ulzat and ulmanat, and he didnt
destroy them.These are the three
daughters of allah. That allah is a
moon god andit has three daughters.
Allah is represented by a Huge moon
whilehis daughters are represented by
small stars. Ramadan was a pagan
orientation practice ages before
muhammad was born, This is apagan
concept. That is why mosque have one
huge moon and threestars around it.
With all these conception and
contraption he,Muhammad, formed
islam. And because religion is an
opuim of themasses, therefore with its
hunger to ppl, he, muhammad used it
tocommitted an abominable calamity
because his allah treated him so
preferentially. He rape slaves, murder
jews, murder christian andfought jihad.
Through histories and journey of life
ppl refuse toinvestigate islam. Islam is
not a religion but an institution of
war,influence and conquest of
muhammad on the ppl of that time
Like · 50 · Reply · 4 hours ago
97 replies
Holudieyur Paul
..Jesus is coming sooner than ever
Like · 9 · Reply · 4 hours ago
1 reply
Awomuse Olabode
@Prosper Xt. Thanks 4 dis piece. dis is
a gud reseach work. Bt whr n wht are d
sources of dis research work-no
citations. To d work itsef, u said
Prophet Muhammed did'nt knw his
fada dat he was adopted. Wht d