1. Malaysiakini (http://www.malaysiakini.com)
(1) Muhyiddin ticks off MCA for reviving 'Allah' issue, 3 August 2010
Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said the issue on the use of the term 'Allah' should not be revived as the matter was still being pursued in court.
(2) Cabinet issues gag order on 'Allah' issue, 4 August 2010
Cabinet wants both the BN and the opposition to stop discussing the home ministry ban on the use of the term 'Allah' by non-Muslims, just one day after MCA vowed that its party's ministers would pursue the matter.
(3) Idris: No gov't involvement in Allah-Yahweh swap, 30 September 2010
by Aidila Razak
Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Idris Jala today denied reports that he is heading a government effort to convince Christians to stop using the word 'Allah'.
The Kelabit Christian, however, fell short of negating the claim that he had indeed advocated that the word 'Yahweh' to be adopted instead.
"I was never asked by the government to convince Christians...I get asked lots of things but today we talk about the economy," he said when pressed by reporters at an SME conference in Kuala Lumpur.
"Church matters should be left in church. I hope whatever I say in church and my prayers will not be broadcast."
Idris was queried following a media report which named Idris, a member of the prominent church Sidang Injil Borneo, as part of a group of Putrajaya-dispatched envoys sent to push the matter.
According to the report, Idris had made the call to drop the use of the word Allah at a church conference last month, ruffling the feathers of many.
The government had banned the usage of the word in Christian publications, including the Malay language bible, as the same word is also used by the majority Muslims to refer to God.
Disputes over the matter had led to arson attacks on places of worship and widespread street protests by non-governmental groups, claiming to be defending the sanctity of Islam.
The Catholic Church on Dec 31, 2009 won a court ruling upholding its constitutional right to print the word "Allah" in its newspaper.
The government has applied to stay the ruling, while the Court of Appeal has yet to indicate when it will move the case along.
2. The Malaysian Insider(http://www.themalaysianinsider.com)
Malay-speaking Christians spurn Jala’s ‘Yahweh’ overture, 29 September 2010
by Debra Chong
Jala’s personal appeal for his church mates to concede the “Allah” dispute has ruffled feathers.
KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 29 — Cabinet minister Datuk Seri Idris Jala is heading the Barisan Nasional (BN) government’s efforts to convince Christians to use the word “Yahweh” instead of “Allah” in Malay, but he is facing stiff resistance from within his own church.
Putrajaya has dispatched special envoys — including Jala, a Christian — to parley with his community and seek a peaceful end to the “Allah” court dispute, amid Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s overtures to world leaders urging pragmatism in dealing with extremists.
The Malaysian Insider understands, however, that the move at home may have caused a rift within the Christian community — in particular Jala’s own Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB) church — with the English-speaking, urban and middle-class members on one side and the poorer, rural churchgoers who mainly use Bahasa Malaysia in their worship, on the other.
Sources disclosed that the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) had last month tried to sway his SIBKL church mates to adopt a less hard-line approach in what word to call their God.
“Idris Jala said he’s willing to use ‘Yahweh’ instead of ‘Allah’,” recounted a man who had attended the three-day church conference from August 26 to 28 with Idris.
“He made quite a few people there unhappy with his statement,” observed the man who requested anonymity as he was a church leader and considered Jala a friend.
“But he added that it was just his personal opinion,” the stout man said.
“Actually, Idris, he’s not a politician. He’s only a man doing his work. He is genuine… he has the heart for the country, but [there are] a lot of ‘hanky-panky people’ around him,” the man added, in defence of the Sarawakian pastor’s son.
He described how the minister had been roped in to help the government clean out its stables but that this has tarnished his image, in veiled reference to the Port Klang Free Zone scandal as an example, but did not elaborate.
Malaysia’s churches have been fighting a protracted court battle with the ruling BN government for the right to use the word “Allah” to refer to God in Christian worship.
The Catholic Church won its bid on December 31 last year while two other suits filed separately by the SIB Sabah church and by a young Sarawakian SIB member, Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill, are still pending.
In the controversial New Year’s Eve judgment, the High Court ruled that the Catholic Church’s weekly newspaper, The Herald, had the constitutional right to publish the word “Allah” to refer specifically to “God the Father” in its Bahasa Malaysia section, to cater to the nation’s indigenous Christians from Sabah, Sarawak and the Orang Asli in the peninsular interior.But the home ministry had appealed against the judgment and Christians are still barred from using the word, which essentially includes using the Bahasa Malaysia version of their holy book, the Bible, in print.
The two SIB disputes date back to 2007, when the home ministry’s enforcement officers seized several Christian religious books and CDs brought in from Indonesia, allegedly for jeopardising Malaysia’s security because they contained the word “Allah” and may confuse local Muslims who understand the word to be used exclusively to refer to God in the Islamic context.
A Bumiputera Christian leader with the SIB told The Malaysian Insider the Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had recently dispatched two special officers, Datuk Pirdaus Ismail and Datuk Lau Yeng Peng, to meet with the church and negotiate an out-of-court settlement.
The duo had met with the SIB Sabah church leaders and their lawyers in Putrajaya last Thursday to get an insight into the court cases and possible solutions.
They promised a follow-up meeting, but had yet to fix a date, the insider related.
The Sabahan Christian, who asked not to be named, said the SIB church welcomed the federal government’s recent overtures and stressed it has always been open to negotiations.
He appeared upbeat with the way the closed-door talks with Pirdaus and Lau had proceeded.
“Our culture is to negotiate, to discuss,” he stressed.
“We know going to court is not good… it’s not our culture to go to court, to demonstrate… but we got no choice,” he said and related that previous attempts to engage home ministry then headed by Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar before the suits were filed had ended in a stalemate.
But the Sabahan said the church had learnt its lesson from the past encounters with the BN government and would not back down without getting a written agreement allowing Christians to use the word.
“If we don’t resolve this soon, Malaysia’s diplomatic relations will be affected,” he said and noted that his Muslim and Christian friends in neighbouring nations, in particular Indonesia — which is the largest Muslim country in the world — had laughed at the way the Najib administration had handled the dispute.
3. Catholic News Asia(http://www.cathnewsasia.com)
East Malaysia Christians refuse to use ‘Yahweh’, 30 September 2010
by cnanewsletter
The Malaysian government is attempting to convince Malaysian Christians to use the word “Yahweh” for God instead of “Allah”.
Cabinet minister Datuk Seri Idris Jala is heading the Barisan Nasional (BN) government’s efforts to convince Christians to use the word “Yahweh” instead of “Allah” in Malay, but he is facing stiff resistance from within his own church, the Malaysian Insider reports.
Putrajaya has dispatched special envoys - including Jala, a Christian - to parley with his community and seek a peaceful end to the “Allah” court dispute, amid Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s overtures to world leaders urging pragmatism in dealing with extremists.
The Malaysian Insider understands, however, that the move at home may have caused a rift within the Christian community - in particular Jala’s own Sidang Injil Borneo (SIB) church - with the English-speaking, urban and middle-class members on one side and the poorer, rural churchgoers who mainly use Bahasa Malaysia in their worship, on the other.
Sources disclosed that the minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) had last month tried to sway his SIBKL church mates to adopt a less hard-line approach in what word to call their God.
“Idris Jala said he’s willing to use ‘Yahweh’ instead of ‘Allah’,” recounted a man who had attended the three-day church conference from August 26 to 28 with Idris.
“He made quite a few people there unhappy with his statement,” observed the man who requested anonymity as he was a church leader and considered Jala a friend.
“But he added that it was just his personal opinion,” the stout man said.
“Actually, Idris, he’s not a politician. He’s only a man doing his work. He is genuine… he has the heart for the country, but [there are] a lot of ‘hanky-panky people’ around him,” the man added, in defence of the Sarawakian pastor’s son.
Malaysia’s churches have been fighting a protracted court battle with the ruling BN government for the right to use the word “Allah” to refer to God in Christian worship.
The Catholic Church won its bid on December 31 last year while two other suits filed separately by the SIB Sabah church and by a young Sarawakian SIB member, Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill, are still pending.
(Source) Malay-speaking Christians spurn Jala’s ‘Yahweh’ overture (Malaysian Insider)
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