Court of Appeal to render another ‘Allah’ decision tomorrow

KUALA LUMPUR - The Christian community in Malaysia will once again train its collective eyes on the Court of Appeal when the appellate court is called upon tomorrow to render a decision on the right of Christians to use the term “Allah” in worship.

In 2008, Sarawakian Jill Ireland had brought into the country eight Christian religious compact discs with the word ‘Allah’ in their titles. These were confiscated by Customs department officials at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in Sepang.

Jill filed a judicial review application in the Kuala Lumpur High Court seeking to quash the decision of the Customs department to confiscate the CDs and asking for their return.
She also sought declarations that:

• she has a constitutional right to import such CDs in the exercise of her right to practice her religion and right to education
• she was constitutionally protected from discrimination on the grounds of religion in the field of administrative law, and
• she was constitutionally entitled to use the word “Allah” in the exercise of her freedom to practice her religion.

In rendering her decision, High Court Judge Zaleha Yusoff quashed the administrative decision to seize the CDs and ordered their return to Jill. She, however, did not address the declarations sought by Jill.

Jill’s lawyer, Annou Xavier, believes that the rights of the entire Christian community in Malaysia fall to be determined by the Court of Appeal in this case.

The concern, he said was that the court would again fail to address the constitutional right of Christians to use the word “Allah” which he said formed the crux of Jill’s appeal, reports the Malaysian Insider.

He vowed to pursue the matter to the Federal Court in the event the Court of Appeal, like the High Court, declines to address the matter.

The case is the second one to touch on the “Allah” issue.

In the earlier case involving the Catholic publication “Herald”, the High Court had held that the Home Minister had acted ultra vires in prohibiting the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur from using the word “Allah” in the Malay version of the weekly paper on grounds of public order or national security.

That decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which held that the use of the term “Allah” in Malaysia was the exclusive domain of the Muslim faith.

An application for leave to appeal was heard in the Federal Court before a panel of seven judges but was dismissed in June last year by a 4-3 majority.

Both the Court of Appeal and Federal Court decisions were greeted with great alarm locally and internationally.

Legal observers noted that the Federal Court decision showed that the Court of Appeal’s earlier judgment was fraught with difficulty, as revealed by the dissenting judgments of Chief Justice of Sabah and Sarawak Richard Malanjum, and Justices Zainun Ali and Jeffrey Tan, and believe that the present case offers the courts the best opportunity to revisit and clarify the law once and for all.