Allah debate: Jury is still out

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein Onn is losing his plot. Having first tacitly endorsed mass protests by disgruntled Muslims last week, he backed down by passing the buck to the police, conveniently forgetting he should be in charge.

Hishammuddin was adamant that things were under control, only to be slapped in the face when more acts of vandalism on worship places happened, forcing him to threaten his detractors with the draconian Internal Security Act.

Umno's top leadership seems to be deeply divided on the issue. While Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak is preoccupied with putting out the fire and sues for peace, other senior leaders remain conspicuously silent or openly defiant.

Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said he had 'friends' in East Malaysia who told him the entire episode could have been avoided if Christians stopped using the word 'Allah', which was as good as advising the Christian community to compromise.

And then Nazri Aziz, Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, stated the word 'Allah' was 'allowed to be used by Christians in Sarawak and Sabah because the government accepts that the natives in these two states have traditionally been using it' and that 'the Muslims there are accustomed to this practice'.

We all know Najib has been working vigorously to promote his 1Malaysia concept. But what Nazri is proposing is a one-state-two-systems solution. Is it not absurd?

A Kadazan Christian may call his/her God Allah in Malay while in Sabah, but must change the name to Tuhan once in the Peninsular. I really cannot see the logic behind this, so can someone enlighten me on this?

A ludicrous opinion as such, if made a cabinet ruling, would also bar Indonesian and even Arab Christians in the Peninsular from praying to Allah!

The inchoate responses of Umno leaders to the issue indicate only the serious divisions within the party, making them look so bad that PAS has emerged as the progressive lot, at least for now.

Najib lost his first opportunity to present himself as a unity figure when he dithered over the planned mass protests last Friday.

He could have urged the Muslim community to remain calm and respect the court's ruling pending appeal, while empathising with their sentiments. Yet he chose an easy way out that in one way or another aggravated the situation.

After all, all Malaysians desire to live in a rule-based society where populism is not allowed to cow the judiciary into submission.

Both Najib and Hishammuddin insist Umno is not to blame for the slew of attacks that have further tarnished Malaysia's already eroding image.

The man who initiated the change

While hard and fast evidence is not available to prove Umno's direct links to the incidents, and the perpetrators too, appear to be afraid of confronting the public face-to-face, the Malay party ought nevertheless to be held responsible for the deteriorating religio-racial ties over the years.

According to the National Evangelical Christian Fellowship Malaysia (NECF), a Gazette Order PU (A) 134 of 1982 allowed the Alkitab, the Holy Bible, to be used in churches without any restriction, even when the book contains the word Allah.

And who, in the first place, sought to change this? It was Mahathir Mohamad, who permitted the Ministry of Home Affairs to add one condition: "Semua Penerbitan Agama Kristian" (For All Christian Publications).

Mahathir (left) took over the home affairs portfolio following the resignation of Musa Hitam in early 1986; it was also at a time when Anwar Ibrahim, Mahathir's blue-eyed boy, was rising fast in Umno thanks to his strong Islamic credentials.

Now I really wonder if we would have been spared all this unnecessary fuss had Musa remained as Home Minister.

The same circular issued by the ministry also restricted the use of three other Islamic words, i.e. Kaabah (a cuboidal building in Mecca), Baitullah (the House of the Almighty Allah) and Solat (prayer).

Although we now know from Reverend Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, that Christian leaders were assured that Allah could be used as long as it was limited to within the Christian circle, it did not stop bureaucrats from exercising their powers arbitrarily.

Since 1986, there have been many incidents where Christian publications (both Protestant and Catholic) imported from Indonesia were purposely held up by immigration officers merely because these books contained the word Allah.

I once knew a couple who worked among the native communities in the hinterlands of Sarawak in the early 1990s. The wife is originally from Hong Kong, but took great effort to learn Malay just to serve the flock.

She and her husband often had to plead with officers to release their items. Since they refused to bribe, the officers knew they could never mess with this God-fearing couple and would usually let go of the books.

On Aug 15, 2007, three boxes of Christian educational publications were unlawfully detained by a customs officer at Sepang. When negotiations failed, the Sidang Injil Borneo Sabah (SIB Sabah) decided on legal recourse.

But the Home Ministry seemed reluctant to go to court and had hearings postponed several times, meanwhile seeking time to impose the 1986 circular in an attempt to make it a de facto reality. The Herald Weekly ended up another victim.

Outcome of consuming 'wolf's milk'

In February 2009, Syed Hamid Albar as Home Minister invoked S. 22(1)(c) of the ISA and signed a gazette ordering all non-Muslim publications to make it clear they were "For Christians Only", and in bold.

It prompted the Herald Weekly to report "Allah comes under the surveillance of ISA".

These "little Napoleons", well connected to Umno, did not expect the Christian communities to fight back since they had been used to 'compromise', hence their knee-jerk reactions.

Worse, Umno leaders continued to turn a blind eye to the increasingly irrational and racist tones in the mainstream media, especially Utusan Malaysia and TV3, as the latter were seeking to incite Muslim sentiments so that those responsible for the controversy would not have to face the public and eat crow.

Umno may not be linked to the recent incidents, but can the party that has gone too far in politicising Islam and turning every issue into a race debate absolve itself of its fair share of blame for the loss of communal trust today?

What purpose does Biro Tata Negara serve? And who has been denying Malaysian students the right to think independently and rationally for themselves?

Zhu Xue Qin, a well-known scholar in Shanghai, once chastised the Chinese government for "force-feeding Chinese students with wolf's milk", meaning that the utterly nationalistic and lopsided teaching of history had only produced a generation that knows nothing but hatred towards the West and, in particular, Japan.

Similarly, Umno under Mahathir successfully monopolised the country and began a series of anti-intellectual effort to turn education into a brainwashing tool; it also attempted to dominate religious discourse, resulting in heightened competition with its chief rival PAS.

When others, such as SIB Sabah, seek nothing but legal clarifications on contentious issues, they run the risk of being stigmatised or even branded public enemy No1. If all this is not the outcome of consuming "wolf's milk", what is?

This aside, the relentless and hasty pursuit of material wealth and growth, engendered by Mahathir but continued by his successors, only has only led to Malaysia having one of the widest income gaps in Southeast Asia.

The undercurrent of resentment and discontent is so strong that it can easily become a pretext for violence if the issues of religion and race are not handled with wisdom. We are sitting on a volcano.

Fortunately, the majority of Malaysians stay calm, rational and forgiving. The public debate on the use of the word 'Allah', attended by a great number of Muslims, last Monday in Kuala Lumpur now serves as a living proof that Malaysians are mature enough to tackle national issues.

It is only selfish politicians and religious leaders with vested interests that refuse to partake in this process of enlightenment.

Najib's promise of RM500,000 to the damaged Metro Tabernacle Church is commendable. Still, how the Unmo-controlled media will report on the further developments of the issue, and whether or not the future court procedures will be independent and transparent, will be the real key indicators of Najib's resolve.

But his recent reminder to the media "to adopt a cautious approach when dealing with opposition parties' statements" related to the controversy only goes to show that he is more interested in polishing his government's image than to address the issue root and branch.

All is not well indeed.