Herald "Allah" : No Again

At the end of last year, in the month of Christmas, the Allah controversy surfaced. On 21st Dec 2007, Malaysiakini reported that our ever-wise Deputy Internal Security Minister Johari Baharum. proclaimed that the word ‘Allah’ can only be used in the context of Islam and not any other religion. Thus more-or-less apply BolehLand copyright on the word.

Malaysiakini also reported that the Herald was having problem with the renewal of its annual publishing permit, the article said :

The Herald, the organ of the Catholic Church in Malaysia, had been facing problems in renewing its publishing permit allegedly because of the word ‘Allah’ was used in referring to ‘God’ in its Bahasa Malaysia section.
The ministry has also allegedly told the publisher to remove the entire Bahasa Malaysia section or the permit will not be renewed when it expires in two weeks.

As a result of this issue of the "Allah" controversy being made public by Malaysiakini, a slew of letters and articles appeared and these can be found here.

The controversy appeared to have been resolved and Malaysiakini had on the 30th Dec reported :

In a press statement, Herald editor Father Lawrence Andrew said that the letter from the Internal Security Ministry - which was hand delivered to the newspaper at about 10am today - "places no restriction whatsoever, and includes the permit for all languages, including the Bahasa Malaysia segment". He said that the newspaper received a letter two weeks ago from the Internal Security Ministry stating that the Herald could not publish its Bahasa Malaysia section from the date of the permit renewal in 2008.

Some suggested the reason for the about-turn was that the government would not want to alienate Malaysia's two million Christians ahead of general elections. Other claimed that it was a belated Christmas present from the government to the Catholics of Malaysia and were very thankful.

I am surprised to note that the Mushrooms amongst us find that there is a need to be thankful to the government in this present controversy. The controversy was created by the government and at best things are back to status quo. So why all those thanks.

But 30th Dec was not the end to the controversy. It is now 2008 and it looks like the government intends to prolong the controversy and is not thankful of all those Mushrooms' thanks.

According to a report in the Star today entitled "Herald can.t use "Allah" in its publications", it is reported that :

The Herald - The Catholic Weekly publication is not allowed to use the word “Allah” in its publications, the Cabinet decided.

The restrictions on the use of the word “Allah” was still enforceable and shall be upheld as decided by the Cabinet in two of its meetings – on Oct 18 and Nov 1, 2006, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Abdullah Mohd Zin said.

It looks that the Mushrooms' thanks are not wanted or appreciated. So what was really contained in the "the letter from the Internal Security Ministry - which was hand delivered to the newspaper at about 10am on 30th Dec 2007"? Does the Cabinet places any value on a letter from the Internal Security MINIster, who happens to be the PM and also the Head of the Cabinet? And can we stop being Mushrooms?