1. Malaysian Mirror (http://www.malaysianmirror.com)
Bishop: Return 15,000 seized Bibles, 5 November 2009
KUALA LUMPUR - The Christian Federation of Malaysia wants the government to return a total of 15,000 Bibles which were seized for having being published in Bahasa Malaysia.
Its chairperson Bishop Ng Moon Hing says the seizure contravened Article 11 of the Constitution, which grants Malaysians the right to profess and practise their faiths.
“This constitutional right is rendered illusory if Christians in Malaysia are denied access to Bibles in a language with which they are familiar,” said Ng Moon Hing in a statement today.
He said withholding the Bibles deprived Christians in Sabah, Sarawak and in the peninsula, a large majority of whom use Bahasa Malaysia, “the right to use the Holy Scriptures in Bahasa Malaysia, to practise and profess their faith and to nourish themselves spiritually.”
Ridiculous and offensive
“Since the 1970s and in consonance with the government’s policies in education and the national language, Christians in Malaysia have received their education in Bahasa Malaysia.
“To deny the same Christians the right to read and study the Bible in Bahasa Malaysia is thus ridiculous and offensive. In fact, it is this action by the authorities themselves which is an affront to good public order.
“We call on the relevant government officials who have neither the authority nor the right to act in this unconscionable manner to explain their action to the church leaders and to the public,” they said, adding that churches stood to their commitment to Bahasa Malaysia as the national language.
Ng said the government had agreed in 2005 that Bibles published in Bahasa Malaysia could be distributed so long as the symbol of the cross and the words “A Christian publication” were printed on the front page.
He called on the government to walk the talk of its 1Malaysia policy and not impose conditions on the freedom of citizens to worship, pray and read the Holy Scriptures in Bahasa Malaysia.
“How can the first pillar of the Rukunegara, that is, ‘Belief In God,’ be made a living reality if the government imposes restrictions and conditions on the constitutional and fundamental right of citizens to freedom of religion?” he said.
2. BBC News (http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk)
Faith Diary: Whose God is Allah?, 5 November 2009
by Robert Pigott (Religious Affairs correspondent)
Religion can be a tense affair in Malaysia.
Roughly two thirds of the population is Muslim, and religious minorities have repeatedly accused the government of undermining their rights.
The interception by Malaysian authorities of thousands of Bibles bound for Christians in the country has produced the latest flashpoint.
The reason - the Bibles use the word "Allah" to described God, and that's been banned by the government.
It says the risk of causing upset to Muslims is too great.
Muslim groups claim that Christian use of a word so closely associated with Islam in Bibles and children's books could be aimed at winning converts.
Religion is closely associated with ethnicity in Malaysia, with ethnic Malays obliged to be Muslim.
Ethnic Indians and Chinese who practise Hinduism and Buddhism are welcome to convert to Islam, but Muslims are not allowed to adopt another faith.
The Malaysian government confiscated 5,000 Bibles earlier this year as they were imported from Indonesia, and has now intercepted another 10,000.
But Christian leaders - who represent a little under 10% of the population - say Malays have been using the word "Allah" to refer generally to God for hundreds of years.
Christians are now fighting back.
An Evangelical church launched legal action in an attempt to win the right to refer to God as Allah in children's books.
The Roman Catholic Church has also gone to court after its newspaper in Malaysia was threatened with the loss of its licence if it continued to use the word.
Christians are turning the issue into one about how minorities are treated in Malaysia.
The Christian Federation of Malaysia says the country's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and it's asking whether that can still be meaningful if Christians are denied Bibles which use their own language.
SWISS DECIDE ON MINARETS
When the treatment of Christian minorities in Muslim-majority countries becomes an issue, Christian-majority countries are apt to compare it unfavourably with the equality they give to Muslims.
But strict equality - at least in the architectural arena - is up for debate in one Christian-majority country - Switzerland.
Later this month the Swiss will vote in a referendum on whether to ban the construction of minarets in the country.
The proposal came from right-of-centre groups and is backed by Switzerland's biggest political party, the hard right Swiss People's Party.
There are about 100 mosques serving some 300,000 Swiss Muslims and small minarets are not unknown - although they're not used for calls to prayer.
Muslims have found allies among Switzerland's Jewish population, who have claimed that the plan would threaten religious harmony and hold up the integration of Muslims.
As in Malaysia, the constitution is being invoked by opponents of the proposal.
The two largest Jewish groups said the referendum infringed religious freedom, a concept enshrined in the Swiss constitution. ITALIANS CROSS ABOUT CRUCIFIXES
Part of the Swiss People's Party's argument against minarets is that they are a symbol of political power - more than they are about religion.
Now with a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights against the use of crucifixes in Italian schools, the same claim is being made for this symbol of Christianity.
Soile Lautsi wants to give her children a secular education and objected to presence of a crucifix in every classroom at their school in northern Italy.
A law dating back to the 1920s requires crucifixes to be hung in Italian schools.
The European Court said the compulsory display of a symbol of a given religion in public buildings violated the rights of parents to educate their children as they wished.
The ruling has produced an angry response from politicians and church leaders who say the crucifix is much more than a religious symbol in Italy.
Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said the crucifix was a "symbol of our tradition", not a mark of Catholicism.
The Rev Frederico Lombardi said the European court should not interfere in what was a profoundly Italian issue, and said it was wrong to imply that the crucifix could be a sign of division or exclusion.
Soile Lautsi's case is similar to one brought in 1995 by a parent in the German state of Bavaria.
A German constitutional court decided it was against religious freedom for crucifixes to be imposed in classrooms.
The Bavarian parliament came up with a new law, requiring the removal of crucifixes - but only if a parent insisted.
The US Supreme Court has also had to decide whether religious symbols break the constitution, and its separation of church and state.
It recently ruled against the positioning of framed copies of the Ten Commandments in two courtrooms in Kentucky, because they had a "predominantly religious purpose".
However, the court did acknowledge that even the Ten Commandments - taken from the Book of Exodus in the Bible - could be displayed, if it was done to illustrate the country's legal history.
It said a monument outside a government building in Texas could continue to display the Commandments, which the Bible describes being given to Moses by God.
But even without court rulings some Italian Christians suspect that long-established traditions are under threat by the changing atmosphere.
Among the casualties, they complain that schools are abandoning nativity plays for fear of offending people from other faiths.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/8345705.stm
© BBC MMIX
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