‘Confusion an unreasonable constraint’

Bishop Paul Tan argues that the fear of spawning confusion among followers of one religion is not a good reason to restrict others from practicing their faith.

KUALA LUMPUR: Fear of spawning confusion among followers of one religion is not a valid ground to prevent others from practicing their faith, said a Catholic leader.

According to Bishop Paul Tan, such caveats were “unreasonable constraints on the freedom of religion guaranteed in the Federal Constitution”.

The Bishop of the Malacca-Johor diocese and president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia was responding to media reports that the Mufti of Selangor Tamyes Abd Wahid had joined his Perak counterpart Harussani Zakaria in opposing the release of Al-Kitab.

The Al-Kitab, which is the Indonesian version of the Christian Bible, was banned in Malaysia because of its use of the word “Allah” as the term for God.

Christians in Sabah and Sarawak had been using “Allah” as the term for God for the better part of eight decades during which their study of scriptural texts was based on the Al-Kitab, which freely used the term.

The issue became problematic in the peninsula when the government in 1986 confined the use of theological terms such as “Allah” to Muslims only.

Sabah and Sarawak Christians were exempted from this stricture but when Christians in the peninsula, who had always chafed at the restriction, posed a legal challenge to the ban, the High Court in late 2009 ruled in their favor.

“The High Court decision has rendered nugatory the 1986 government ban on the use of the term and though a stay has been granted, the dissemination of scripture among the faithful cannot be held hostage to the vagaries of the judicial process,” said Tan.

“That the term has never been the sole property of Muslims is another imperative for the unrestricted dissemination of the Al-Kitab,” added the prelate.

Tan also argued that there were at least three suras in the Quran which stated that the “People of the Book” among whom Christians were included “worship the one true Allah.”

“To add to the false argument for exclusivity the one about Christian use of ‘Allah’ as liable to cause confusion among Muslims is akin to gilding the lily and then shredding it,” he said.

“These arguments in their totality infringe Malaysian Christians’ constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice their religion and insult the intelligence of the Muslim believer. Few things can manage to do that at the same time but this is one instance,” he added.

When complication becomes this excessive, Tan said, “I would prayerfully advise that we opt for a final simplicity: let’s plump for the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice one’s faith, unfettered by unsustainable restriction and self-demeaning fear.” - FMT