KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 9 — The Selangor chapter of Malay rights group Perkasa has accused The Bible Society of Malaysia of provocation and insincerity for complaining that Islamic authorities in Selangor had desecrated Bibles they returned recently by marking them with warning stamps.
In a statement, the right wing group dismissed the complaint as superficial and questioned the Christian group’s motivations, suggesting that the books may have been meant for distribution in Selangor but foiled because of the stamping.
Bishop Datuk Ng Moon Hing, president of the Bible group had said the stamps sullied the holy books and denounced the action as “heinous” and “despicable”. The Christian group also demanded an apology.
The chapter’s chief Abu Bakar Yahya also said the demand for the apology runs counter to religious harmony and seeks to incite the public.
His group also suggested that Ng should be charged for provocation if the bible society sticks with this “attitude”.
He added that no apology was necessary as the stamping did not affect the content of the books
Early this year, Selangor‘s Islamic religious bodies had seized about 300 Bibles which used the word “Allah” to refer to God, returning them recently after a drawn out affair and adding the warning stamps in question.
On November 14, Selangor’s Islamic Religious Department (Jais) returned the 351 holy books seized to the Association of Churches of Sarawak (ACS), which was witnessed by the sultan.
The furore over the stamping is not new; two similar cases have been reported over the last few years.
Controversy over non-Muslim use of “Allah” first erupted when the Catholic Church initiated a legal suit against the federal government after it was first banned from publishing the Arabic word for God in the Bahasa Malaysia section of its weekly newspaper, Herald, in 2007.
Christianity is the third-biggest religion after Islam and Buddhism.
The issue has become a religious flashpoint in a country where the line between creed and ethnicity is often blurred.
