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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

All is not lost, ‘Allah’ decision confined to Herald only, lawyers say

Catholic weekly Herald editor Rev Father Lawrence Andrew says today the ‘Allah’ case touches on the right to profess one's faith. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Nazir Sufari, January 21, 2015.Catholic weekly Herald editor Rev Father Lawrence Andrew says today the ‘Allah’ case touches on the right to profess one's faith. – The Malaysian Insider pic by Nazir Sufari, January 21, 2015.With no more legal avenues to pursue for the right to use the word "Allah" in Catholic weekly, Herald, its editor Rev Father Lawrence Andrew today expressed disappointment at the Federal Court's dismissal of the appeal, while lawyers, however, said it did not mean the issue of non-Muslims' right to use the word was settled.
Rev Andrew said it was an important constitutional case on the right to profess one's faith and said he hoped that the rights of minorities, including the poor and the underprivileged, would not be trampled upon.
The Catholic Church today lost its final bid to review the Federal Court's earlier decision upholding the Court of Appeal's ruling to ban the Herald from using the Arabic word for "God" in its Bahasa Malaysia content.
"Malay has been the language in the church in Malaya for centuries and I have shown evidence than BM was already a language of worship for hundreds of years in devotional booklets.
"And during this period, there was no trouble whatsoever, so I don't see an possibility of evoking trouble,‎" the priest said.
Despite appearing to be at the end of the road, the church's lead counsel Datuk Dr Cyrus Das said the issue was not necessarily over.
It could be raised through other cases, Das said, adding that matter of constitutional rights of minorities could still be taken up.
The merits of the church's case in the dispute over using "Allah" needed to be raised in the courts in other cases on the same topic, especially on the home minister's powers to ban words and the scope of prohibitions.
"There are other constitutional issue‎ that have not been addressed, and this can be taken up in other cases," said Das outside the courtroom at Putrajaya's Palace of Justice.
MCA politician Gan Peng Sieu, who is also a lawyer and was holding a watching brief on the case for the party, described the Federal Court's decision today as a great injustice.
He ‎said it was unfortunate that the status quo on the “Allah” issue remained following the dismissal.
"The Federal Court is skirting away from answering constitutional issues which are left hanging.
"The people were expecting the Federal Court to do more as this is beyond politics, the duty of the Federal Court is to preserve and defend the Federal Constitution and the current state of the 'Allah' issue will not do any good for the country," said Gan, whose party, MCA, is a component member of the ruling Barisan Nasional government.
Gan also said that laymen and religious groups would infer that the matter had ended with today's decision, when that was not the case.
‎Datuk Zainul Rijal Abu Bakar (pic), president of the Muslim Lawyers Association appeared to agree, saying that the decision was only confined to the Herald.
It simply meant that the church could not use the word "Allah" in the publication. 
"Muslims are unhappy because the word ‘Allah’ was used to refer to a non-Muslim God.
"But is not a blanket ruling that non-Muslims cannot use the word," he added.
‎‎The church had submitted 28 questions of law at the leave stage on administrative and constitutional law, as well as questions of general principles. 
That, however, was rejected by a Federal Court panel chaired by Chief Justice Tun Arifin Zakaria in June last year in a 4-3 majority ruling.
Today, the five-man bench headed by Tan Sri Abdull Hamid Embong took an hour to return a unanimous verdict in the negative to the church's final attempt to revive its appeal.
The panel today held that procedural unfairness did not arise in the earlier bench led by the country's top judge and that the church did not meet the threshold for review under Rule 137 of the Rules of the Federal Court.
- TMI

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