Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
14 January 2010
Malaysia is fighting to retain its moderate Islamic character as the government
headed by Prime Minister Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak and the people come to
grips with the controversy over the use of the word Allah by non-Muslims. A New Year's
eve court ruling that allowed a Catholic publication in Malay language to use the word
"Allah" to refer to the Christian god, triggered protests, including attacks on Churches.
Now the Sikh community in Malaysia has waded into the row after a Gurudwara was
pelted with stones. The Sikhs maintained that their religious text, the Guru Granth Sahib,
contains references to Allah, and therefore they should have the freedom to use that
word. But a large number of Malays (all Malays are Muslim) insisted that Allah is
exclusive to Islam, and non-Muslims should do with another Bahasa Malaysia word
"Tuhan" (a generic term for Lord).
For his part, Prime Minister Najib Razak sought to inject a degree of pragmatism into the
discourse by saying that Malaysian people by and large are liberal and moderate. "The
situation is under control[.] The show of unhappiness over the court decision is quite
minimal. It is an exaggerated reaction of a small group of people[,] their number is very
small," he said in a recent interview to visiting Indian journalists. He added:
"[Malaysians] are peaceloving. Violence not associated with practice of religion. We are
doing our utmost to maintain harmony and government will take action against any
group." As New Delhi gets ready to host Prime Minister Najib Razak next week, both
India and Malaysia find themselves on the same side of the divide. The Muslim-
dominated Malaysia and India, home to the world's second-largest Muslim population
after Indonesia, pride themselves in being liberal societies, but the emergence of an
extremist fringe has forced their governments and civil societies to rally together to
preserve their multi-religious and multi-ethnic identities.
Chandra Muzaffar, an academic and social activist, believed that it was improper to
suggest that non-Muslims cannot say Allah, but he qualified it by saying that misuse, or
more likely mischief, of the term can be a problem. He said that there were genuine fears
that encouraging non-Muslims to say Allah would lead to avoidable confusion and in
some cases, proselytisation. He recalled that the status of Bahasa Malaysia as the
national language was not disputed, nor was there any political debate on Islam as the
official religion. "We have achieved a high degree of consensus," he said, before
asserting why Tuhan, and not Allah, should be preferred. The Malaysian National Anthem
uses the word Tuhan, and not Allah, as does the National Charter, which talks of belief in
God as opposed to Allah, in deference to the sentiments of the minorities.
Prof Muzaffar, who teaches at the Universiti Sains Malaysia (or Science University of
Malaysia), feared that the rise of Wahabi influence in the Muslim world should be
watched out for, particularly in Malaysia, which has so far remained relatively immune to
extremist elements. "Wahabism is limited in Malaysia but it has shaped the thinking of
groups around the world," he cautioned, adding that a beard or its length -- which
Wahabism prescribes but is not in vogue in Malaysia -- should not be a determinant of
one's identity.
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