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(The Star) - The High Court has set Feb 27 for mention of the case to hear the use of the word ‘Allah’ in the Herald - The Catholic Weekly, a Christian publication.
Judge Lau Bee Lan of the special appellate and powers division of the High Court said that the date was set to allow all parties time to file their affidavits. The Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur as the plaintiff had applied for a judicial review of a Home Ministry directive forbidding the Herald publisher from using the word ‘Allah’ instead of ‘God’. The plaintiff’s counsel Porres Royal said his client argued that the directive was unlawful under the Federal Constitution and that the word was not exclusive to Islam. On Dec 5, the publisher filed a writ of summons in the Kuala Lumpur High Court to seek a declaration on the use of the word. In the statement of claim, the archbishop as the plaintiff stated that the word ‘Allah’ had been used since the inception of the publication to refer to ‘God’. Earlier this year, the court decided that the publisher had the right to challenge the Home Minister’s decision to ban it from using the word as a Malay translation of ‘God’ in its publication and practice. The mention date was also set to allow the other respondents to file their affidavits in the suit filed by the publisher. The respondents were the Home Ministry, the Government and the state Islamic Councils of Federal Territory, Terengganu, Penang, Selangor, Kedah, Johor, Malacca and the Malaysia Chinese Muslim Association (Macma). The Malaysian Gurdwara Association had also applied to file for intervention in the case by Feb 27 to seek to be given the right to use ‘Allah’ in its publications and practices. Mubashir Mansor, counsel for the Terengganu, Penang and Malacca Islamic councils said on Friday that they would file an affidavit in two weeks to the Federal Court to argue that no court of law could hear this case though he declined to give further details on the contents of the affidavit. “Basically, the question of whether this issue can be debated in a court of law is non-justiciable based on provisions given in the Federal Constitution,” he said, adding that the alternative was not in a Syariah court and that the other state religious councils and Macma would file similar applications. Porres also said that the publisher had earlier objected to the councils applying to be included in the suit by the publisher against the Minister and the Government but had now changed its mind. However, he said his team did not know what they had in mind to be included in the defence.
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