Welcome Guest   |  Login   |   Signup
JG Logo
Thu, February 9, 2012
Archive Search

10,000 Indonesian Bibles Seized in Malaysia for Using the Word ‘Allah’
November 07, 2009

Share This Page
4
0
0
5
Share with google+ :


Post a comment
Please login to post comment

Comments

k.o.k.o
12:26am Nov 8, 2009

Why?

1. It made in Indonesia.

2. Indonesia is the exporter of that bibles.

3. Indonesia so damned dare to use bahasa melayu(they think Indonesian must use java or batak language - and not bahasa melayu as lingua franca of bahasa Indonesia back in 1928?).

4. Like other religious extrimist, they don't want to share a common ground for other religion (because other religiouns are dirty and not worthy sharing even the language).

What an arogant, intolerance and racist people!

Valkyrie
11:51am Nov 7, 2009

Islam teaches that Allah is the same God worshipped by the members of other Abrahamic Religions such as Christianity and Judaism.

To claim that the word Allah should not be mentioned by other faiths is certainly contradictary.

Frankly, the intention of detaining the bibles from Indonesia is really not the main issue when one think about it more seriously. There are other reasons which cannot be written and readers will need to form their own conclusions.


Kiai Carita
10:31am Nov 7, 2009

Too stupid to comment on, but forgive them for they know not what they are doing.

yozeir
2:14pm Nov 6, 2009

my way...........and I do it my way........

Simon P
11:01am Nov 6, 2009

The human race ay? We're a virus with shoes. These are the end of days

  • Previous
  • 1
  • Next

Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian government has refused to release 10,000 Bibles confiscated for using the word “Allah” to refer to God, a banned translation in Christian texts in the Muslim-majority country, an official said on Wednesday.

An official from the Home Ministry’s publications unit said the government rejected pleas by church officials to allow the Bibles, imported from Indonesia, into the country. Christians say the Muslim Malay-dominated government is violating their right to practice their religion freely.

Such disputes are undermining Malaysia’s reputation as a harmonious multiethnic, moderate Muslim nation. About 30 percent of the country’s 28 million people practice Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism or other faiths.

A Home Ministry official said the government told the importer last month to return the Indonesian-language Bibles, which are currently being held by customs.

“Actually the publications, the Bibles, are already banned,” said the official, refusing to elaborate. He declined to be named because he was not authorized to make public statements.

The Bibles contain the word “Allah,” which is banned by the government for use by non-Muslims in an apparent bid not to offend the country’s majority Muslim population.

Church officials say the Arabic-origin word “Allah” has been used for centuries to refer generally to God in both Indonesian and Malaysian languages, which are similar. The word is even used by Christians in Arabic-speaking countries around the world.

The government, however, maintains that the word “Allah” is an exclusively Islamic word. The Roman Catholic Church is challenging the ban in court.

Another 5,100 Bibles, also imported from Indonesia, were confiscated in March and have not been released. But the ministry official did not immediately have any information on those.

The Christian Federation of Malaysia, which had called for the release of all confiscated Bibles, described the seizure as “ridiculous and offensive.”

“This constitutional right [to practice freely] is rendered illusory if Christians in Malaysia are denied access to Bibles in a language with which they are familiar,” the federation’s chairman, Bishop Ng Moon Hing, said.

He also rejected concerns that Bibles in the Malaysian language, or Bahasa Malaysia, containing “Allah” would upset Muslims.

“Bibles in Bahasa Malaysia have been used since before the independence of our country and have never been the cause of any public disorder,” he said. Malaysia gained independence in 1957.

Associated Press