Source: World Watch Monitor, March 17, 2021
A Malaysian woman’s campaign for Christians’ right to use the word “Allah” for “God” has succeeded after almost 13 years of court hearings and delays.
Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill has been campaigning for the right to use the word ever since immigration officials at a Kuala Lumpur airport seized eight Christian CDs from her in May 2008 because the CDs used the word “Allah” in a Christian context.
After a seven-year legal battle, Ireland was given back the CDs in 2015, but she maintained that the court had failed to address her constitutional right as a Christian to use the word.
In October 2017, her lawyer, Lim Heng Seng, noted that 60% of Malaysia’s Christians speak the Bahasa Malaysia (“language of Malaysia”), which uses “Allah” for “God.” The word, which predates Islam, has been used by local Christians for hundreds of years, since Europeans first spread the religion, long before Malaysia even came into existence.
He said Christians were never consulted when in 1986 the country banned Christians from using the word, and that the government’s blanket ban was unconstitutional and discriminatory.
After years of delays, including several this year due to COVID-19 lockdown, the Court of Appeals judge Nor Bee ruled in Ireland’s favor that the 1986 directive by the Home Ministry to prohibit Christians from using four prohibited words, including Allah, was not a blanket ban.
Read the full story. An article from the BBC includes additional background, and the case is more fully described in a piece from Malay Mail (which identifies Ireland as “a Sarawakian of the Melanau tribe.”) Note that this decision is being appealed (The Star).