By Prem Kumar
KUALA LUMPUR
Malaysia's apex court has dismissed a review application by the Catholic Church to appeal a ban on using the word "Allah" to refer to God in its Bahasa Malaysia newsweekly – Herald.
The ruling upholds a verdict given by the seven-member Supreme Court bench last June.
The Church's long battle came to an end after a five-man bench led by Abdul Hamid Embong unanimously decided that there had been no procedural unfairness in the Federal Court's earlier decision.
“The threshold for the review had not been met. The Federal Court had been fair in the case by not allowing the appeal,” the judge said while reading his judgment Wednesday.
In June 2014, the seven-member panel of federal court judges dismissed the church's application in a slim 4-3-majority ruling.
The church lawyers had before this argued that "Allah" has been used for many decades by Christians in East Malaysia, which consist of many ethic groups.
They had also indicated that the ban would be a violation of freedom and expression.
Prime Minister Najib Razak has been extremely vociferous with regard to freedom of the press and religious organizations since taking over the premiership in 2009.
While his sincerity is still being questioned in many quarters, Najib has been silent on the Allah issue since the crisis - which led to various street demonstrations and chaos - broke two years ago.
The Malaysian federal constitution enshrines Islam as the religion of the federation while giving other faiths the freedom to practice their religions as long as it does not disrupt the practices of Muslims.
