He said the word “Allah”, which has been used in their holy book for centuries, has become part of a Sarawak Christian’s racial DNA. The issue is expected to be a hot topic in the coming state elections widely expected to be held next month.
The newly-elected chairman of the Associated Churches of Sarawak (ACS) is the first east Malaysian Christian cleric to weigh in on the ongoing uproar over the Home Ministry’s seizure of 35,000 Malay Bibles — or Al-Kitab as they are locally called — imported from Indonesia and meant for the Bumiputera Christian market here.
“Even such issues as fundamental to our faith — as the Holy Bible, the Bahasa/Iban Bible; and the use of the word ‘Allah’, which we have been using for centuries and is already in the DNA of our vernacular — are being banned for the exclusive possession of a certain race,” Lapok said in his speech at the first ACS biennial meeting here last night.
A copy of his speech was emailed to The Malaysian Insider.
“It is restrictions such as these that provide a perfect recipe for murdering the spirit of goodwill and peace among neighbours,” he added, noting that Sarawak is also the state with the biggest Christian population.
Lapok told the congregation of Catholic and Protestant church leaders that, he said, represented nearly half the state’s total population that religious tension has been on the rise, “which had tested the very fabric of our society and resulted in the stoning of a church and a desecration of a mosque”.
He said that he was recently told that a church’s building plan had been rejected, ostensibly because the cross — the symbol of Christianity — on its rooftop was “too showy”.
Lapok described the present situation as a “crossroad” for Christians in Malaysia.
“I call it a crossroad because never before have the churches ever encountered, [been] rattled and stunned by the events that occurred during our tenure of office,” he said.
The Anglican bishop remarked that while the churches have received government aid, “it is a fact that they were given in a rather ad hoc manner and come far in between”.
He said that in the long term, the government had done little to lessen the Christian community’s unhappiness or respect their religious rights.
The bishop called on his fellow clerics to pressure the federal government to set up a special portfolio to take care of non-Muslim affairs.
Lapok’s idea is one of several that have been put forward to pressure the Najib administration into releasing the Al-Kitabs locked up by the Home Ministry since March 2009.
His counterpart in the peninsula, another Anglican bishop, Ng Moon Hing, had last week issued a scathing rebuke against the prime minister for the Home Ministry’s continued refusal to release 5,000 Al-Kitabs shipped in by the Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM), which have been stuck in Port Klang for two years.
Ng disclosed too that the ministry had instead seized another 30,000 books worth RM78,000 from Indonesia from the port here.
In the statement, Ng, who heads the Christian Federation of Malaysia (CFM), said that Christians are “fed up and angered by the repeated detention of Bibles written in our national language”.
The ministry is currently facing immense pressure from Christian groups and political parties to release the 35,000 Malay-language Bibles impounded at Port Klang and Kuching Port.
According to Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, the books were detained due to a pending appeal on a 2009 High Court judgment allowing Catholic weekly The Herald to publish the word “Allah”.
Hishammuddin said the ministry was waiting for advice from the Attorney-General on whether to release the detained books.
However, official letters from the ministry to its importer, the BSM, show the Cabinet decided on the matter in June last year.
DAP MP Tony Pua called Hishammuddin’s bluff, pulling out the latter’s written reply to Parliament on the same issue last year, stating that the ministry had already issued a notice to BSM to take back its shipment.
Despite this, BSM has claimed that its attempt to collect the books had been thwarted by the Port Klang authorities.
Hishammuddin’s statement yesterday conceding to the detention of the holy books and announcement that the ministry was now awaiting the A-G’s advice on what to do with the shipment has further added to confusion over the government’s actual stand on the matter.
The Sarawak government has also asked for the ban to be lifted, noting that the Bibles have been imported without any trouble previously. - Malaysian Insider
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