1.The Malay Mail Online (http://www.themalaymailonline.com)
(1) ‘Allah’ appeal inconsistent with government’s 10-point solution, Archbishop says , 12 August 2013
by Ida Lim
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 11 — Putrajaya's appeal against the 2009 High Court ruling giving the Catholic Church the right to use the word “Allah” is inconsistent with the Najib administration's 10-point solution in April 2011, said Archbishop Tan Sri Murphy Pakiam.
Pakiam noted that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had issued the 10-point deal despite knowing of the Home Ministry’s appeal in 2010, saying that the 2011 solution amounted to Putrajaya’s nod over the High Court’s landmark decision.
“I am advised by my solicitors and I verily believe that in light of the letter dated 11.4.2011, the Government of Malaysia (the 1st and 2nd Appellants) logically ought to have discontinued their appeal,” Pakiam said in an affidavit that was made available to The Malay Mail Online today, referring to the Home Ministry and the government.
In the affidavit filed in July together with an application to strike out the case, Pakiam laid down the arguments on why he considered the 10-point deal as rendering the government's appeal as being an “academic” case.
Pakiam said the April 11, 2011 letter could be seen as a recognition and acceptance by the government of the Christians' rights to use the word “Allah”, after the community was told it was free to print Bibles here in languages using the word.
“The letter dated 11.4.2011 demonstrates that the Government of Malaysia (the 1st and 2nd Appellants) recognises and accepts the rights of Christians to use the word 'Allah' by virtue of Christians being allowed to freely import and locally print Bibles in Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia and in the indigenous languages of Sabah and Sarawak.”
Pakiam also argued that the letter acknowledged that the Christians' use of the word would not threaten national security and public peace.
He went on to say that it purportedly shows the government's acceptance of the Catholic Church's right to use the Arabic word in Christian publications, including its weekly publication Herald.
“By extension, the letter dated 11.4.2011 is also therefore clear and unequivocal evidence of the 1st and 2nd Appellant’s recognition and acceptance of the Respondent’s right to use the word 'Allah' in Christian publications such as Herald-The Catholic Weekly which makes frequent references to these Bibles in Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia.
“Finally, the letter dated 11.4.2011 amounts to an acceptance of the decision of the High Court dated 31.12.2009 which quashed the 1st and 2nd Appellants’ decision.
“In light of the unequivocal representation made to the Christian community permitting the use of the word Allah, there is no longer any legitimacy in the appeal,” said Pakiam, the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur.
The Court of Appeal is set to hear the Catholic Church's striking-out application on August 22. If it fails in its bid to strike out the case, the appeal will be heard on September 10.
Ahead of the heated Sarawak state polls in 2011, Putrajaya had issued the 10-point solution to the Christian Federation of Malaysia (CFM) - an umbrella body of churches nationwide - which allowed the Christian community to publish and distribute Malay-language bibles.
The letter was seen as a move to quell the Christian community's unhappiness over the government's impounding shipments of the bibles, due to the presence of the word “Allah” in its reference to the Christian God.
Last month, the CFM had urged the Najib administration to honour its 10-point solution, following reignited debate over the non-Muslims' right to use the word “Allah”.
The “Allah” row erupted in 2008 when the Home Ministry threatened to revoke the Herald’s newspaper permit, prompting the Catholic Church to sue the government for violating its constitutional rights.
In 2009, the High Court made a landmark ruling in favour of the Catholic Church, when it said the Middle Eastern word was not the exclusive right of Muslims and the Herald could publish it in its Bahasa Malaysia section, which caters to its Bumiputera congregation.
In January 2010, the Home Ministry filed an appeal, but there was a three-year hiatus before the dates were fixed for the case at the Court of Appeal.
Christians are Malaysia’s third-largest religious population at 2.6 million people, according to statistics from the 2010 census, behind Muslims and Buddhists.
Bumiputera Christians form about 64 per cent, or close to two-thirds of that figure, and have prayed in the national language and their native tongues for centuries.
(2) Aidilfitri sermon to warn Muslims against ‘enemies of Islam’ , 2 August 2013
by Zurairi AR
KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 2 — An official sermon planned for the Aidilfitri celebration next week has warned Muslims nationwide against a conspiracy by “enemies of Islam” to manipulate them through ideas like secularism, pluralism, socialism, feminism, and positivism.
The sermon, to be read out to Muslims on the first day of Hari Raya Aidilfitri next week, suggested that such “colonial” ideas were being used to incite challenges against Islam’s position in the Constitution and open debate about Syariah law.
The official sermon by the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) was uploaded to its website yesterday, also with a rare version in English, one week earlier as Muslims nationwide wind down Ramadan, their holy month of fasting.
The warning comes amid several controversial decisions by Jakim in the last few weeks against individuals which it has deemed as “insulting Islam”, including a non-Muslim blogger couple, four Muslim beauty pageant hopefuls, and a Muslim dog trainer.
“As we celebrate the Aidilfitri, we must realise the various ways and strategies of the enemies of Islam to undermine the unity and peace in the country,” said the sermon here.
“They move through well-organised and devious ways by cultural pollution, spreading slander against unity either through the mass media or cyberspace, violating federal laws, questioning the position of Islam in the Constitution, (and) insulting the position of the Malay kings.”
Jakim’s sermon today seemed to mirror Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom’s remarks this week when he claimed that the ongoing debate over four Muslims dropped as beauty contestants recently is part of an attempt to divide followers of the faith.
Four Muslim women were dropped as contestants in the Miss Malaysia World 2013 pageant last month and are now under investigation for allegedly breaching the National Fatwa Council’s edict and allegedly insulting Islam.
Federal Territory syarie chief prosecutor Ibrahim Deris was also quoted recently as saying that action can be taken against anyone belittling a fatwa, even non-Muslims, as it could be seen as insulting Islam.
The sermon also lamented increasing debates against the religion and the administration of the syariah law, despite the alleged respect afforded to Islam as the religion of federation as prescribed in the Constitution.
Jakim also reiterated its repeated line, calling for censure against what it called “colonisation of minds” through “Western ideologies and doctrines” such as secularism, pluralism, socialism, feminism, and positivism.
“They are planning all this carefully and wisely. They have launched psychological warfare openly and bravely to manipulate the minds and beliefs of Muslims when the Muslims are plagued by crisis of confidence and the loss of strength and unity,” said the sermon.
The recent spotlight on Islamic decrees by Malaysian authorities on its followers as well as non-Muslims has led to heated debate over their enforcement here, with some groups deeming certain provisions under religious law to be regressive while others have voiced concern over a worrying trend of overt Islamisation in a multicultural country.
In a 105-second video reposted on YouTube on Tuesday, dog trainer Maznah Mohd Yusof is seen walking and bathing her three dogs as the “Takbir Raya”, or Muslim call to prayer traditionally reserved for the first day of Hari Raya Aidilfitri, plays in the background.
The juxtaposition appeared to be a reference to the wudhu, or ablution performed by Muslims before prayer; dogs are also considered unclean by adherents of the predominant faith in Malaysia.
Maznah has since been arrested and was released from remand in Johor earlier this afternoon on a court bond. Jamil Khir has confirmed today that Jakim has decided that it was an insult to Islam.
Maznah’s arrest comes after sex bloggers Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee were charged recently under the Penal Code and Sedition Act, for posting a mock “Selamat Berbuka Puasa” (breaking of fast) greeting on their Facebook page that showed them eating “bak kut teh”, a soupy pork dish. Muslims are prohibited from eating pork.
2.Patheos (http://www.patheos.com)
Religious Freedom? Mostly Not, 12 August 2013.
by Robert Hunt
Much of the western, Christian world lives in a bizarre fantasy land concerning religious freedom.
Catholic World News reports on June 22nd that a court in England has refused asylum status to a woman and her child. She claimed that her husband in Malaysia planned to convert to Islam and forcibly convert their baptized child. And in fact he did convert and announced his intentions to register his child as a Muslim.
However, the English judge said, “C [the boy] himself is only 6 years of age and although he has been baptised a Christian and admitted into the Roman Catholic church, there is no reason to think that he has as yet formed any independent religious faith,” The judge then ruled. “He will be able to make his own decisions about religious matters when he grows up. Removing him with his mother to Malaysia where he can be brought up by both parents in the country of his nationality would not interfere with any of his own Convention rights and is clearly in his best interests.”
What this ruling ignores is that in Malaysia, and indeed virtually all dominantly Muslim countries, there is no right for either a child or an adult to “form an independent religious faith,” or “make his own decisions about religious matters.” Those declared by a parent to be Muslims have no right to choose any religion other than Islam. Indeed, they cannot even choose how to be Muslim. A former Malaysian Prime minister is actively promoting the complete outlawing of Shi’ite Islam, and religious authorities currently restrict many forms of traditional Malaysian Sufism. Nor are these restrictions theoretical. In a large number of cases in Malaysia in the last two decades Muslims have been denied the right to change their religion, or have had their mosques shut down and their religious leaders jailed.
And the rest of the Muslim world? Sectarian attacks and violence against non-Muslims are virtually endemic.
Is it better in non-Muslim lands? Not really. In China we find the ongoing persecution of the Falun Dafa, with tens of thousands killed, and a magnitude more imprisoned. It is clear that freedom of religion does’t exist if religious teaching or behavior is deemed to threaten the state. Christians in China are enjoying some respite from government attacks, but not Buddhists in Tibet.
And Israel, from which I write? Well people here are free to change religions, but not to publicly propagate their religion or persuade Jews to convert. A significant (or at least active) group of ulta-Orthodox Jews have used varying degrees of violence and abuse to insist that their religious law be followed by everyone. And they deny (with the full backing of the Israeli government) their fellow Jews the religious freedom to perform valid marriages or to be buried in Jewish cemeteries.
In fact support of religious freedom isn’t a natural product of being religious, or for that matter following atheism or any other ideology. Religious freedom is the hard won product of human social development guided by a rational desire for human flourishing. It emerges within a constellation of freedoms related to the conviction that the self-cultivation of the individual in an environment of free and open debate and association is the highest human good, and leads to the flourishing of human societies.
For full religious freedom there must be freedom:
1. to hear and study diverse religious ideas,
2. freedom to form one’s own conceptualizations privately and through discourse with others. (freedom of conscience)
3. freedom to disseminate one’s own religious ideas (freedom of speech),
4. freedom to gather with others of a like mind and religious practice (freedom of assembly)
5. freedom to ritually enact one’s religious convictions. (freedom of worship)
6. and freedom to engage one’s religious convictions in public discourse over laws that order and regulate society. (political freedom)
All these freedoms are founded on the idea that truth and human flourishing emerge not from the privileged guardians of revelation implementing what they believe they have heard, nor from an elite class of respected and learned teachers, but from full and open public discourse in which all humans have an equal place.
This idea that truth emerges from open public discourse in which all humans have an equal place is absent from much of the Muslim world, the world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, much of Eastern Orthodoxy and the cultures in which it is embedded (simply see the Russian patriach’s rants about homosexuality), and the cultures of Asia. A significant number of American Christians don’t believe in it either. In these worlds the idea of open public discourse in with all humans have an equal place is too individualistic, and lacks protection for the communal solidarity regarded as essential to the preservation of a stable society.
For such freedom to emerge in Europe and America it was necessary both to break the political power of the church and other religious leaders, and for they themselves to recognize that this was necessary – if not desirable – for their continued existence and the flourishing of the societies in which they could live, but not dominate.
Whether that lesson is universally applicable remains to be seen. But until real religious freedom is found outside the world of the North Atlantic then societies that value religious freedom must recognize where it doesn’t exist, and continue to offer asylum to those whose lives, and even more souls, are in danger. Hell is the place where there is no religious freedom, not heaven, where even angels can choose who they worship.
(End)
