Catholic Bishop Paul Tan Chee Ing said today the fear of spawning confusion among followers of one religion is no reason to prevent adherents of another faith from legitimate practice of their own.
Responding to reports that Selangor mufti Mohd Tamyes Abd Wahid had joined his Perak counterpart, Harussani Zakaria, in opposing the release of copies of Al-Kitab, 35,000 of which have been impounded at the ports in Kuching and Port Klang, Paul Tan in his capacity as bishop of the Melaka-Johor diocese spoke to Malaysiakini and said that such caveats were "unreasonable constraints on the freedom of religion guaranteed in the federal constitution."
Responding to reports that Selangor mufti Mohd Tamyes Abd Wahid had joined his Perak counterpart, Harussani Zakaria, in opposing the release of copies of Al-Kitab, 35,000 of which have been impounded at the ports in Kuching and Port Klang, Paul Tan in his capacity as bishop of the Melaka-Johor diocese spoke to Malaysiakini and said that such caveats were "unreasonable constraints on the freedom of religion guaranteed in the federal constitution."Paul Tan is also president of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Malaysia.
The Al-Kitab, which is the Indonesian version of the Christian Bible, is banned in Malaysia because of its use of 'Allah' as the term for God even though Christians in Sabah and Sarawak have been using 'Allah' as the term for God for the better part of eight decades during which their study of scriptural texts was based on the Al-Kitab, which freely uses the term.
In 1986, recourse to the Al-Kitab became problematic on the peninsula when the government confined the use of theological terms, such as 'Allah', to Muslims only.
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