Beware the Christians of S'wak and Sabah

The Home Ministry is appealing the Kuala Lumpur High Court judgment, allowing the Catholic Church to use the word "Allah" as a Bahasa Malaysia translation for the Christian "God".

The decision is hardly surprising.  

In such a sensational case, the Home Ministry simply cannot be seen to be losing.  Besides, upon the final outcome of the court process, rides the prestige and edifice of Umno as ‘Protector of the Malay Race and Religion’. They have mounted the fierce tiger, and there is no way to get down.  

The church will not back down either.  

From the early days when the Roman Empire used to deed them to the lions in the amphitheatre for the sake of entertainment, right through the two turbulent millennia of their long history, the church has always persevered or even thrived through thick and thin.

Eventually, the hysteria surrounding this debate is more political than theological, and the court may not be the best venue to settle this dispute.  Unfortunately, Barisan Nasional has taken such an ill-conceived move to ban the use of 'Allah' in the Christian Bible, and the church has no other recourse except to go to court.

Then, when the Malay/Muslim judges begin to hear this case, how will they pass judgment, without being seen as traitors to their own faith by their more zealous fellow Muslims? The already tattered reputation of our country’s judiciary will come under the microscope again. It is a mess, I tell you. At the end, probably nobody wins!

The argument is almost surreal. Your God is not like my God, and so he cannot be called by the same name as mine. This is the scenario that will tickle philosophers of linguistics to no end.

Can we not use one word to mean two different entities, and not get confused? We are told the native Christians in Sabah and Sarawak had done so for over 100 years, long before Malaysia came into being, and long before Bahasa Malaysia became her national language.

Then again, even if the Home Ministry eventually succeeds in banning the use of the word 'Allah' in all Christian publications, can they ban the countless Christian faithful from praying to their “Allah” in the privacy of their homes, or in public space in church services?

Will the police come to arrest them when they do so? As I observed, Christians have always thrived under persecution.

Widely used in Indonesia

To make this name calling exercise even murkier, we are told that in Indonesia – the largest Muslim nation in the world – the word 'Allah' is used liberally in the Christian Bible to mean 'God'.

One wonders. What makes the Indonesian Muslims tick as a nation for them to share the most revered name in their existence with the Christian friends and neighbours, given the long history of enmity and warfare between these two great faiths tracing back to the 10 Crusades?

It does show that the Muslim clerics and their followers in Indonesia are confident enough in the efficacy of their religious teaching and the strength of the faith, so that using the same name for 'God' will not confuse the believers of two separate religious.  

As for the millions of Malaysians who are neither Christians nor Muslims, they must be completely puzzled by it all. For the life of them, they just cannot understand what the fuss is all about. At least in this country, they can go about worshipping their own wide array of gods of their choice.

But Indonesia is an important source of printed Bibles for native Christians in Sarawak and Sabah.

Just this year alone, the authorities in Sarawak seized 15,000 copies of the Bible imported from Indonesia precisely because they use the word 'Allah' for the Christian God.

Christians in Sarawak are hopping mad in private, but they are a meek lot, never dreaming of going to the streets to demonstrate their displeasure or their sense of moral outrage.

What these Christians should realise is that while Christians constitute merely nine percent of the entire Malaysian population, they make up 47 percent of Sarawakians and a similar number in Sabah. In these two states, Muslims are a small minority.

If let’s say the appellate court and the Federal Court rule in favour of the Home Ministry, and the word 'Allah' disappears from the Christian Bible forever, how will the clerics and the masses of Christians in Sarawak and Sabah react politically?

I know that unlike the liberation theology of South America in the 1960s and 1970s, Christianity of all denominations in Malaysia has always preferred separating religion from the affairs of state.

The average Christian will probably tell you how religion and politics make a dangerous cocktail. They will advise you to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.

That is largely, but not entirely true.

Next general election

In a multi-religious society that practises parliamentary democracy, when the question of religious rights has been infringed, the best venue to seek redress is through the ballot box peacefully. Without that peaceful recourse, there is only one way for religious conflict to go: heightened and prolonged religious tension and possibly bloody conflict.

At this critical juncture in history, BN power at the centre is held together by support for them in Sabah and Sarawak.  

If at the end of a highly publicised court process, and the court forbids the Christians from using the word 'Allah', how will this issue be played out in the next round of general election?

Will the issue not promise to be one of the most contentious questions for Sarawakians and Sabahans for at least a decade to come?

I am getting ahead of myself of course. It is better that we wait patiently for the court to run its full course. It does mean that suddenly, politics in Sabah and Sarawak will begin to loom large on the horizon, and the people of these states may have to be called to make an unprecedented contribution.

After all, to ensure that Christians have the right to call their God by any name they wish, all they have to do is to vote out BN from Sarawak and Sabah sometime in the future.