Muslim Majority Malaysia Could Ban Guru Granth Sahib Ji – The Living Guru Of The Sikhs

[Mehtab Singh]

The Court of Appeal ruling on the Allah issue yesterday has given wide-ranging discretionary powers to the Home Minister to make pre-emptive executive decisions, says Tony Pua.

By: Sikh24 Editors

KUALA LUMPUR (October 15, 2013)The Malaysian Court of Appeal decided this week that the government can controland banthe use of the word Allah, Arabic for God. The ruling has also given wide-ranging discretionary powers to the Home Minister to make pre-emptive executive decisions.

The judgement read by Justice Mohamed Apandi Ali stated that the Home Minister had sufficient material before him to ban Catholic weekly The Herald from using the Allah word as such usage if allowed will inevitably cause confusion within the community.

In a swoop, the court has empowered the Home Minister to make pre-emptive executive decisions to ban words or publications which he deems will cause confusion, said Petaling Jaya Utara MP and DAP National Publicity Secretary Tony Pua today.

He added that with such powers, the Home Minister will be able to rule that Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikhs Living Guru and Holy Book should be banned due to the use of the word Allah in Gurbani, the Gurus word.

Should any church in East or West Malaysia be declared illegal for the widely accepted use of the term Allah, and the court will deem itself to have no plausible reason for the High Court to interfere with the ministers decision, he said in a statement.

He pointed out that the ramifications of the Court of Appeal decision to empower the Home Minister were wide-ranging.

It is not the place of the Court of Appeal to decide who are the majority and what they want, and they certainly have no competence to do so.

It should be emphasised again that the role of the court is to determine legality and not making highly subjective moral judgments on ill-defined subjects, he said.

Deciding Religion on behalf of the church

Pua further said that the Court of Appeal judges had decided on behalf of the church on what was deemed integral part of the faith and practice of Christianity.

The court found Allah not integral to the church and hence they find no reason why the respondent is so adamant to use the name Allah in their weekly publication, he said

The court has no role in deciding what is integral or otherwise in any religion practised in Malaysia. Such a finding is completely irrelevant to a decision over the legality over the use of Allah.

Hence the court have clearly overstepped its boundaries into the realm of theological discourse, and more critically, breached the Article 3 of the Federal Constitution which allows for other religions to be practised in peace and harmony, and and Article 11 which states that every religious group has the right to manage its own affairs, he added.

He warned that the long-term impact of the Court of Appeal decision was well beyond the issue of the churchs use of Allah. This decision in regards to the Catholic Church could have a huge impact on Sikhs.

Decision must be appealed

He added that the court had given itself the power to make discretionary judgments not on the basis of the constitution and the law passed by the parliament, but by the judges own personal viewpoints and bias.

Secondly, the court trampled on the rights of the minority by endorsing the oppression by the majority as well as to give discretionary and absolute pre-emptive powers to the Home Minister for actions against anyone deemed to be wrong.

The whole argument behind the judgment is clearly unreasonable and cannot be left to stand, he said.

He said the decision must be challenged in the Federal Court not just because it affects a particular religions use of a specific term, but on the implied powers of judges as well as the executive branch of the government to make discretionary decisions and mete out punishments without legal or factual basis.

The Court of Appeal yesterday allowed an appeal from the government to bar The Herald from using the word Allah in its Bahasa Malaysia edition, overturning a 2009 High Court ruling which favoured the Christian publication.

The panel of judgesMohamed Apandi Ali, Mohd Zawawi Salleh and Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahimwere unanimous in their decision that there was no infringement of constitutional rights as claimed by the publishers.

http://www.sikh24.com/2013/10/muslim-majority-malaysia-could-ban-guru-granth-sahib-ji-the-living-guru-of-the-sikhs/#.Ul1-cFCkros

[N30S1NGH]

How these people will ban gurbani dhuni of allah in vayu mandal via pavan guru?

[Mehtab Singh]

Sikhs will use Allah as it is in their holy scriptures, says Gurdwara council chief

BY V. ANBALAGAN

OCTOBER 16, 2013

Jagir Singh stresses the word Allah has been used by Sikhs for more than 6 centuries. The Malaysian Insider pic by Nazir Sufari, October 16, 2013.

Sikhs will continue to use the word Allah in their religious practices as the word appeared numerous times in their holy scriptures, said the Malaysian Gurdwara Council president Jagir Singh.

"There is no way the word can be excluded since it is found in the Guru Granth Sahib, just like in the holy Quran for Muslims," he said, adding that Sikhs throughout the world has used the word in the past six centuries.

He said the 350,000 faithful in Malaysia can continue to use the word found in the holy scriptures despite the Court of Appeal decision on Monday when it banned the word Allah from being used in the Bahasa Malaysia section of the Catholic weekly, Herald.

The Sikh scriptures are recited during weddings and home purification ceremonies. There are some 180 gurdwara (temples) in the country, with about 10 in Sabah and Sarawak.

On Monday, a three-man bench which allowed Putrajayas appeal to reverse a High Court ruling that the Herald could use the word, said the word Allah was not an integral part of the Christian faith and practice.

The court said it saw no reason why the church was so adamant in wanting to use the word Allah.

It said such usage, if allowed, would inevitably cause confusion within the Malaysian community, and added that the welfare of an individual or group must concede to the majority community.

Jagir, who is also president of the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism, said the Court of Appeal judgments covered a "wide dragnet".

"I dont know how the government and Muslim religious authorities want to enforce the court decision," he said.

He said there were already state enactments that banned non-Muslims from using the word since Islam came under the authority of state governments.

Jagir said the (Gurdwara) council was also waiting to see how the Home Ministry was going to react to the court ruling.

"But we have always maintained that nobody has a monopoly over the word from the cultural and religious perspective," he added. - October 16, 2013.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/sikhs-will-use-allah-as-it-is-in-their-holy-scriptures-says-gurdwara-counci

[sat]

Basically they are afraid that muslims may realize that Allah is the same in all religions and not just for muslims hence their so called kafir agenda goes out of window and muslim women and others may even think about converting because of all the lies and hypocrisy that they have been fed for generations by these mullahs is just man made bs.

[cool water]

Allah is just the name for God in SGGS Ji just as Bhagwaan, krishna, ram, etc is. It is not the same Allah that is of the vengeful, hateful and jealous islamic Quranic God Allah that sees his own supposed created non-muslims inferior to muslims.

Anyways they cant stop Sikhs using the word Allah nor can they stop Christians or other religions. They should be grateful we honour and hold the word in such high regard and respect.

[Jonny101]

This law of banning non Muslims from using Allah is because of Christian missionaries. Everywhere Christian missionaries try to proselytize people using some questionable methods like using terminology of other religions in order to make Christianity seems more acceptable to the locals. But what I find strange about Muslims in this is that when they are in foreign countries they expect to have the right to do their Dawa and win converts to Islam, but they deny the same rights to non Muslims in Islamic lands. They even go to the extent of making apostasy from Islam against the law and many times killing apostates! Yet in foreign countries they will play a different tune by claiming "there is no compulsion in religion" and "to you your religion, to me mine" oh and my favorite "Islam is a religion peace"

[Mehtab Singh]

when they are in foreign countries they expect to have the right to do their Dawa and win converts to Islam, but they deny the same rights to non Muslims in Islamic lands. They even go to the extent of making apostasy from Islam against the law and many times killing apostates! Yet in foreign countries they will play a different tune by claiming "there is no compulsion in religion" and "to you your religion, to me mine" oh and my favorite "Islam is a religion peace"

This is indeed infuriating and I've highlighted this before also. You have to literally "beg" to build a Gurdwara Sahib or Mandir in a Muslim country, but all you need for a mosque in a Western country is regular paperwork and you're all set. The world needs to wake up, and wake up before its too late.

Name just one non-Muslim country where Muslims are oppressed. Now name a Muslim country where non-Muslims are oppressed (you better have enough pen and paper for this one).

You guys don't know the experience of growing up as a Hindu in the Middle East. Each time I hear "religion of peace", I giggle, because I've seen the real deal at the root of where it sprang from. In a way, I thank Guru Sahib for it. Because if I hadn't seen those kind of days, who knows, I may never have been inclined towards Sikhi. And to be honest, the very first thing which hit my mind hard at the age of 16 was ਚੁ ਕਾਰ ਅਜ਼ ਹਮਹ ਹੀਲਤੇ ਦਰ ਗੁਜ਼ਸ਼ਤ ॥ ਹਲਾਲ ਅਸਤ ਬੁਰਦਨ ਬ ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ੀਰ ਦਸਤ ॥ When all other methods fail, it is proper to hold the sword in hand. Even though Sikhi was to come much later in life, I made this my measuring scale to live by. These days if I tell people the kind of days me and my folks had to face, and how I always was a bad a$$ who didn't turn away from getting into a fight, I end my stories with the phrase "ehvi ni bahmna da munda Sardaar baneya!"

Have no fear Singho and Bheno, and do NOT fear anyone, Hindu or Muslim. Fear only Akal Purakh. We are not slaves, so live as free Khalsa.

[BritishSingh]

This ban is stupid, because Allah was spoken before Islam. Even Jesus apparently said Allah.