Malaysian Catholics' Lawyers Offices Are Ransacked

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By JAMES HOOKWAY

Intruders ransacked the offices of the legal team that's defending a Malaysian Roman Catholic newspaper's right to use the word Allah in its Malay-language pages, church officials said, marking a fresh escalation of the bitter dispute.

The Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Catholic Herald, said legal staff found door-locks forced open and papers scattered across the floor when they arrived for work on Thursday morning. Derek Fernandez, the main lawyer acting for the newspaper, said closed circuit television cameras were vandalized to prevent them recording the incident, and that a lap-top computer was missing.

"My first impression is that the break-in is related to the Allah case," Mr. Fernandez said. "It is designed to intimidate us in the case we are handling for the Herald."

The Associated Press quoted Arjunaidi Mohamed, the police chief of the Kuala Lumpur suburb where the break-in occurred, as saying it was too early to link the raid to the recent spate of church attacks.

The ransacking comes amid rising religious tensions in Malaysia after the country's High Court on Dec. 31 ruled that Christians can use the Arabic word Allah in their Malay-language publications. Many Muslims were angered over the ruling, saying the word should be exclusive to Muslims, who could be tricked into following Christianity if non-Muslims are permitted to use the term.

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Since the ruling, which the government is appealing, 10 churches have been attacked in various parts of the country with Molotov cocktails or defaced with paint. Arsonists razed the administrative office of one to the ground. A Sikh temple was also attacked with stones late on Wednesday, possibly because Sikhs also use the term "Allah" in some scriptures.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, argues that the Arabic word is the only acceptable translation for God in the Malay language, and that Malaysian churches attending to indigenous, Malay-speaking tribes have been using the term for decades.

The dispute presents an awkward problem for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who must call an election by 2013. Political analysts say he needs to retain the support of the country's Muslim majority while winning back votes from the large ethnic-Chinese and Indian minorities, many of whom backed an opposition coalition in the last elections in 2008.

Some economists, meanwhile, worry that Muslim anger over the Dec. 31 court ruling could dissuade Mr. Najib from pushing for further reforms of Malaysia's race-based affirmative action program.

Known as the New Economic Policy, the decades-old initiative was designed to give a boost to the country's Muslim Malay majority and help them catch up economically with their ethnic-Chinese compatriots. Mr. Najib and other government leaders – as well as many business leaders – argue that Malaysia needs to provide a more level playing field to stimulate economic growth, but analysts say carrying out reforms will be politically difficult.

—Celine Fernandez in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this article.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

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