Final court loss for Malaysian Catholics in Allah dispute
January 21, 2015
Malaysia’s weekly Catholic newspaper has lost its last legal challenge to a ban on the publication’s use of the word “Allah” to refer to God.
The Malaysian Insider reported that the ruling applies only to the Catholic Herald and is not a blanket prohibition of the use of the word by non-Muslims.
In the Malay language, Christians have used the word “Allah” to refer to God for centuries.
Islam is the official language of Malaysia, whose population is 61% Muslim, 20% Buddhist, 9% Christian, and 6% Hindu. About half of Christians in the Southeast Asian nation are Catholic.
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Posted by: bernie4871 -
Jan. 21, 2015 10:58 PM ET USA
Is a god who is defined as transcending good and evil the same God who is defined as Love and goodness? Is god a "cracker" who demands submission, or is God our Father who made us in his image as free and obliged by nature to love but refrain from judging others? The shallowness of thought that tolerates the use of "Allah" to represent the Creator and Lover of the universe is inexplicable to me. Their Court got this one right. Let's rejoice instead of bemoaning the suppression of a stupidity
