|PIC1|Malaysia’s government is to file an appeal against a recent ruling by the Supreme Court deeming a ban on the use of the word “Allah” by non-Muslims to be unconstitutional.

"The government is very much aware and concerned of various reactions that it has received after the recent High Court decision,” Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak told reporters Sunday.

"The issue is very sensitive and touches on the feelings of Muslims, we need to be calm now and let the matter be resolved through the courts," he added.

After Thursday’s landmark ruling, Muslim activists were quick to mobilise, including the National Union of Malaysian Muslim Students, which urged the government to take the case to the Appeals Court. They claim that Christian missionaries using the word Allah could trick Muslims into leaving their faith.

Some even managed to hack into the website of the Roman Catholic Church’s weekly Malaysian publication, The Herald, which sparked the court battle.

On Thursday, two years after The Herald first filed suit, Judge Datuk Lau Bee Lan announced that the word “Allah” was not exclusive to Islam and that the government’s Home Ministry was “not empowered” to ban non-Muslims from using the word.

“This … means that the Bahasa Malaysia-speaking community of the Christian faith can now continue to freely use the word ‘Allah’ without any interference from the authorities,” the Rev Fr Lawrence Andrew, editor of The Herald, told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysia’s Catholic Church first filed a lawsuit against the government in late 2007 after the government threatened to revoke The Herald’s printing permit if it did not cease using the word “Allah” in the Malay language section of its newspaper.

While Home Minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar prohibited The Herald from using the word "Allah" on the grounds of national security and to avoid misunderstanding and confusion among Muslims, the Catholic Church argued that the barring of non-Muslims from using the word “Allah” was unconstitutional and violated freedom of religion.

Lawyers for the government argued that the ban on the use of the word "Allah" in The Herald did not affect the publication’s freedom of religion nor that of other Christians.

Under the Control and Restriction of the Propagation of non-Islamic Religious Enactment passed into law by 10 states in 1988, it is an offence for non-Muslims to use the word ‘Allah’ to refer to any God other than the Muslim God.

The Catholic Church took the Home Minister to court to overturn the Home Ministry’s ban, contending that the word did not belong solely to Muslims. It argued that Catholics in Malaysia had been using the word for centuries.

Published in four languages, The Herald serves indigenous Malaysians from Sabah and Sarawak, who are mostly Christians and use ‘Allah’ as a translation for God.

According to the CIA World Factbook, 60.4 per cent of Malaysia's 25.7 million people ascribe to Islam. Around 19.2 per cent, meanwhile, are Buddhist, and 9.1 per cent are Christian.