'Allah' ruling mystifies more than clarifies

COMMENT Religious disputes make for bad law.

A week after the Court of Appeal's ruling on the 'Allah' dispute, differing interpretations of the decision have contributed to a muddle.

There's little chance that this conundrum will yield to a legal-cum-political Alexander whose sword severed all the mystification of the Gordian knot.

The law can be a complex field of inquiry, more so when theological matters are up for adjudication, which is why the law's magistrates nurse a healthy reluctance to pronounce on them.

Judges properly feel they are the final authority on interpretation of the law but in matters where it is assumed a transcendent authority hovers over their ruminative brow, magistrates are understandably balky.

Presuming on this discomfort and wanting to avoid it were among the reasons for the church/state separation in constitutional democratic charters.

But in Malaysia, where the mosque and state are conjoined, no such discomfort is assumed as disabling.

This has contributed to the frightful muddle that has evolved since the Oct 14 decision of the Court of Appeal.

If the ruling by the appellate court could only be confined to the respondent's use of the 'Allah' term in the publication, The Herald, the matter's capacity for conflicting interpretation could conceivably be confined.

The interpretive divide

But the ruling was on a matter more consequential than one publication's use of the controversial term.

The ruling was to decide a dispute on whether non-Muslims could use the term 'Allah' in their rituals of worship and in faith education and dissemination.

Ranged on one side of the interpretive divide are those who contend that the appellate court's ruling affects only the respondents of the case, the Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur and The Herald.

It is only The Herald that cannot use the term 'Allah' for God in its Bahasa Malaysia section as the word, in the view of the chief judge of the three-member Court of Appeal panel that decided the case, is not integral to the faith and practice of Christianity.

The other school of interpretation construes the ruling as not just binding on The Herald but on all non-Muslims in Malaysia. It says the court ruled that Muslims had an exclusive right to the use of 'Allah'.

Therefore non-Muslims have to back off from use of the term, no matter if Arab Christians have been using that term from before Islam's advent or that Sikhs have had the term in their scriptures since its compilation in the 16th century.

Inevitably, the appellate court's ruling has triggered a storm of controversy.

Foreign commentators and domestic critics decried the ruling while local Muslims groups, with some exceptions, hailed it. Rarely has a dispute over the use of a word been this polarising.

That the dispute had more to do with politics than with semantics was deduced from reactions to the court's ruling aired in the immediate aftermath.

Piecemeal application of the law

Christian members of the ruling coalition sought to soften its impact on their constituencies.

They told Christians in Sabah and Sarawak, who for decades have been using the term in their faith, education and rituals of worship, that the ruling did not affect them; they can carry on as before.

The votes of Sabahan and Sarawakian Christians have been critical to keeping the ruling coalition in power after two general elections, in 2008 and 2013, had seen the opposition Pakatan Rakyat threaten Umno-BN's hold.

When they weighed in on the controversy, local political leaders in Sabah and Sarawak did not have kind words for the court ruling. They said no court could infringe their right to use the 'Allah' term.

Judicial fiat and electoral expediency are not an easy fit, which is why after Sabahan and Sarawakian Christians made plain their dissent, the authorities that benefitted from their electoral support sued for placation. The latter claimed that the court decision impacted The Herald only.

But judicial rulings on matters of law cannot lend themselves to piecemeal application. For it to stand, the law's majesty and authority must enjoy across-the-board application.

The law cannot be couched in mincing semantics or applied piecemeal. Otherwise a cardinal prop which is the equality of citizens under its regimen is eroded.

For some time now a tunnel conception of the law and the concept of its rule have crept into the jurisprudential landscape.

This narrow vision has allowed for retired judges to return to the practice of law and has permitted private practitioners to take up public prosecutions.

This solipsistic vision has rendered the law a poor blossom cut off from its roots in logic, history and equity.

TERENCE NETTO has been a journalist for close on four decades. He likes the occupation because it puts him in contact with the eminent without being under the necessity to admire them.  

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