PUTRAJAYA: The Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur has filed an application to strike out the government’s appeal against a High Court ruling to allow a Catholic weekly newspaper to use the word ‘Allah’.
Lawyer S Selvarajah for the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop said the notice of motion was filed at the Court of Appeal registry on Monday.
Selvarajah told reporters yesterday that the Court of Appeal had yet to fix a date to hear the application.
Meanwhile, the Home Ministry and the government’s appeal came up for case management yesterday before deputy registrar Saiful Bahari Adzmi.
The ministry and the government were appealing against the Dec 31, 2009 High Court decision in allowing the Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop’s judicial review to lift the Home Ministry’s ban on the use of the word ‘Allah’ in the Herald to refer to the Christian god.
Saiful Bahari fixed Sept 10 for another case management to enable the government to file its affidavit in response to the church’s affidavit and for the interveners to rectify the record of appeal and additional record of appeal.
The government was represented by senior federal counsel Andi Razalijaya A Dadi and Munahyza Mustafa while the Islamic religious councils from the states of Terengganu, Selangor, Kedah, Johor, Wilayah Persekutuan and Melaka which were made interveners, were represented by lawyer Abdul Rahim Sinwan.
The Catholic Church led by Archbishop Murphy Pakiam filed the judicial review on Feb 16, 2009, naming the Home Ministry and the government as respondents.
They sought, among others, a declaration that the decision by the Home Ministry on Jan 7, 2009, prohibiting the use of the word ‘Allah’ in the Herald was illegal and that the word ‘Allah’ is not exclusive to the religion of Islam.
The weekly, published in four languages, has been using the word ‘Allah’ as a translation for ‘God’ in its Malay-language section, but the government argued that ‘Allah’ should be used exclusively only by Muslims. — Bernama