A Catholic newspaper in Malaysia may have just two more weeks in print unless the government backs off a threat to close it down over its use of the word "Allah" to describe the Christian god, Reuters has reported.
The newspaper says that it is a victim of politics and that the government that has ruled Malaysia for 51 years since independence from Britain is stoking religious conflict in a bid to retain power after big losses in elections earlier this year.
The Reuters report also said: [Link]
Other religious groups have complained of persecution in this country of 27 million in which almost 60 percent of the population is Malay and Muslim but which has substantial ethnic Indian and Chinese minorities who practise a variety of faiths.
"The Catholic Herald's 'Allah' is seen as a threat to national security," Father Lawrence Andrew, editor of the paper, told Reuters at his office behind an early 20th century church in the heart of the Malaysian capital. "We are now a scapegoat, a means for the Malay-Muslims to rally together," Andrew said of the paper which needs the license to publish in 2009.
In recent weeks, ethnic Chinese Malaysians have expressed alarm after a leading politician
from the main government party called for Chinese language schools to be closed. An ethnic Indian group that organised a huge anti-government protest in 2007, triggered in part by the demolition of what authorities said were illegal temples, was banned in October as a threat to national security.
The Herald—the Catholic Weekly has a circulation of 14,000 and has been published since 1980 but in July was told its licence was being reviewed as its use of the word Allah could inflame the Asian country's majority Muslim population.
The Herald publishes in English, Mandarin and Tamil languages but it was the use of the Malay language that especially irked the government. It publishes in Malay to cater for tribal communities in the states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo Island, many of whom converted to Christianity long ago.
