ICC Note:
Whether non-Muslims are allowed to use “Allah” to refer to God is still a controversial issue in Malaysia. Even though the Kuala Lumpur High Court has ordered the release of Christian CDs that bear the word “Allah” and which were confiscated in 2008, the court did not set a time frame for the return of the CDs. The ruling did not deal with points including “the exercise of the constitutional right to import publication materials related to the practice of Christianity,” according to the article.
07/22/2014 Malaysia (ECUMENICAL NEWS)– The Kuala Lumpur High Court has ordered the release of Christian CDs that bear the word “Allah” and which were confiscated by Malaysia’s Home Ministry in 2008.
Judge Datuk Zaleha Yusof did not set a time frame for the return of the CDs to their owner, the Malay Insider reported July 21.
Nor did she rule on the constitutional issue of whether Christians had the right to use the word “Allah” in their worship.
The ruling also did not deal with points made by the petitioner which included the exercise of the constitutional right to import publication materials related to the practice of Christianity.
The decison came after Malaysia’s Federal Court in June dismissed the application for leave to appeal by the Catholic Church to appeal against a ban on its weekly Herald newspaper from using the word “Allah.”
Mainly Muslim Malaysia has recently been embroiled in a court cases and controversies surrounding the use by Christians of the word ‘Allah’ to denote God.
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