bobjots : redux

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I fear that the arbitrary ban on the use of certain words in the national language by the non-Muslim communities in this country will not stop with Allah. The press has recently caught on:

• ‘Allah’ not only word banned
  Malaysian Insider, January 14, 2010
   
• 彭州憲法規定非回教刊物‧禁用25字眼及10用語
  (Pahang laws ban use of 25 words and 10 expressions in non-Muslim publications)
  Sin Chew Daily, January 13, 2010

Generally speaking, the administration of Islamic law in Malaysia is within the jurisdiction of the respective states of the Federation. These laws may not be uniform throughout Malaysia and this has, in fact, been a point of contention on the part of some Islamic law reform activists who are seeking to standardise Islamic law throughout the Federation.

As of 2004, nine states in Malaysia have laws cited as either Control and Restriction of the Propagation of Non-Muslim Religions Enactment, Non-Islamic Religions (Control of Propagation Amongst Muslims) Enactment, or other similar names. They are empowered to do so under Article 11(4) of the Federal Constitution, which states:

State law and in respect of the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Labuan, federal law may control and restrict the propagation of any religious doctrine or belief among persons professing the religion of Islam.

Under Section 9 of these enactments, a list of terms and expressions are codified and deemed to be reserved solely for the use of Muslims and cannot be associated with a non-Islamic religion. An offence would be deemed to have been committed if a person (the wording in all the enactments are generally the same or similar):

1. in any published writing; or
2. in any public speech or statement; or
3. in any speech or statement addressed to any gathering of persons; or
4. in any speech or statement which is published or broadcast;

and which at the time of its making he knew or ought reasonably to have known would be published or broadcast, uses any of these words or any of its derivatives or variations, to express or describe any fact, belief, idea, concept, act, activity, matter or thing pertaining to any non-Islamic religion except by way of quotation or reference.

The list, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is quite extensive and includes some terms that are widely used in the faith and practice of many non-Muslims, particularly Christians and Sikhs, in Malaysia. And incidentally this list isn’t exhaustive as the legislation allows for the Ruler or State Authority to amend the list by Gazette (ie. it doesn’t need to be tabled before the respective State Assemblies for approval).

Of course, one major problem with the enforcement of these laws is that Islamic law has no jurisdiction over non-Muslims. To make them applicable to non-Muslims, federal law that empowered the Home Ministry to enact regulations by Gazette had to be used (in the case of the ban on Allah and the previous ban on the Iban language Bible, it was the Internal Security Act 1960).

In response to some of the enquiries brought up in a Facebook wall conversation that highlighted the Pahang ban on words other than Allah (and also to debunk they “myth” that only Pahang has these restrictions), here’s a table listing the various prohibited terms and expressions by state and the year the restrictions were legislated:

 
* Johor’s enactments does not specify any prohibited terms and expressions. Instead, it prohibits the use of “any of the words (and expressions) of Islamic origin“.

I am somewhat partial to Hafiz’s argument that to fight this ban on a “no alternative translation” platform is not necessarily useful or true. He points out that in the Malay language, alternative translations to God include tuhan, dewa, dewi, dewata, indera and khalik (R. O. Winstedt’s 1963 Unabridged English-Malay Dictionary). He also points out that early Muslims in the Nusantara actually referred to Allah as Dewata as evidenced from the Terengganu Inscription Stone, hence suggesting that terminology of polytheistic origins could be used contextually to refer to a monotheistic deity.

Nonetheless, this doesn’t really resolve the current impasse. The language of the various laws referred to above makes no discrimination on the language used.

Even in the very unlikely scenario that Christians were to agree to translate Allah to an alternative term in the Malay language and bear the logistical nightmare required to convert the vocabulary and corpus of literature to appease this demand, it would still leave the Sikhs (who also use Allah in their prayers and Scripture in their own language), Ibans (whose native term for God is Allah Taala) and the Lundayeh (whose native term for God is Allah), amongst others in a lurch.

Personally, I don’t know how we are going to resolve this impasse. A live and let live attitude would be best but this would be political suicide for the incumbent ruling party, who has played this agenda progressively over the last two decades to the tipping point.

At times like these, I can only trust God to pull us out of this mess. Kyrie Eleison!