A Malaysian court’s decision last week to overturn a decades-old policy banning Christians from referring to God by using the Arabic word “Allah” is unlikely to close the chapter on the saga, analysts say, with the government on Monday appealing against the ruling following pressure from conservative Muslims. With the country likely headed for fresh elections later this year, the resurgence of the issue – and the possibility of rekindled tensions among Muslims and Christians – might give embattled Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin yet another political headache, the analysts added. The March 10 ruling by the Kuala Lumpur High Court involved a 2008 case brought by Jill Ireland, a clerk from the east Malaysian state of Sarawak. Malaysia court overturns ban on use of ‘Allah’ by Christians in publications Ireland – who is Christian, and a member of Sarawak’s indigenous Melanau ethnic group – had claimed that a 1986 directive by the home affairs ministry banning Malay-language Christian publications from using the word “Allah” was a violation of her constitutional rights. She initiated the case after authorities confiscated, and later returned, eight CDs that contained words proscribed under the home ministry’s order. In her decision last week, Justice Nor Bee Ariffin ruled that the 1986 government order was in fact “illegal and unconstitutional”. Malaysia’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion. The judge said that along with the word “Allah”, Christians also had the right to use three other words of Arabic origin: “Kaabah”, or Islam’s holiest site; “Baitullah”, meaning “house of God”; and “solat”, or prayer. Malaysian politics observer James Chin told This Week in Asia the judge’s ruling was a “doubled-edged sword” given the long-running Christian-Muslim feud in the country surrounding the use of the word “Allah” to describe the Christian God. “On the one hand, Christians will celebrate; on the other, it will spur Jakim [the Department of Islamic Development Malaysia], the right-wing Malay groups, and the government to think of new ways to restrict and make Islam more ‘exclusive’,” said Chin, director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania in Australia. Christianity is practised by about 10 per cent of Malaysia’s 32 million people, with a large number of worshippers living in the states of Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo and hailing from ethnic groups such as the Melanau, Kadazandusun, Dayak, Iban and Bidayuh. New Malaysian law punishes misinformation about coronavirus with jail and heavy fines Malay-speaking Malaysian Christians contend that they have used the term Allah and other Arabic-origin words for centuries to describe God. Among conservative Islamist groups, the key concern is that the use of Malay words by Christians would aid the conversions of rural Muslims. It is illegal in Malaysia to convert from Islam to another religion. In 2009, a lower court’s decision to allow the Malay-language version of the Catholic Church’s newspaper, The Herald , to use the word Allah triggered arson attacks and vandalism at Christian religious sites in the country. “The fear that Muslims will get confused and converted out of Islam is very much an imagined threat by Muslim nationalists in West Malaysia, thinking that it is a conspiracy to proselytise Christianity to Muslims,” said Dr Wong Chin Huat, political scientist at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia (JCI) at Sunway University. “Bornean Muslims who are close to their non-Muslim families and friends never feel threatened. In other words, it is a Malayan restriction on a Borneo phenomenon demonised out of Malayan ignorance,” he said, referring to the historical grouping of Peninsular Malaysia. Malaysia’s Solicitor-General Abdul Razak Musa on Monday told local media an appeal against the ruling had been filed with the Court of Appeal, following calls for it to be challenged last week. Malaysian court rules corruption trial of Rosmah Mansor, wife of ex-PM Najib Razak, to proceed On Sunday, Pembela, a coalition of some 50 Muslim groups, expressed “shock and disappointment” with the High Court’s ruling, saying it went against a precedent set by the Federal Court – the country’s highest judicial body – which in 2014 upheld the 1986 government order and set aside the 2009 decision. Key members of the prime minister’s ruling Perikatan Nasional alliance – comprising the Malay-only nationalist parties Umno and Bersatu as well as the hardline Islamist party PAS – had also said the ruling should be appealed. Amid mounting expectations that a snap poll will be called later this year, political analysts also weighed in on the impact the ruling will have on campaigning. Muhyiddin obtained royal assent in January to declare an eight-month state of emergency, ostensibly to quell the Covid-19 pandemic – though his opponents say the measure was taken to forestall a collapse of the government after a series of defections. The prime minister has insisted that the public health crisis was the sole reason for the emergency, and that he would call fresh polls as soon as the situation was brought under control. Political scientist Muhamad Nadzri Mohamed Noor from the National University of Malaysia said with signs pointing to an election campaign centred on “identity and religion”, the Allah ruling could feature heavily as Muhyiddin crosses swords with opponents. The election has been pitched as a battle for leadership of the country’s Malay majority, following a dramatic splintering in recent years within the previously cohesive Malay establishment. Apart from challenges to his power from opposition heavyweights Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir Mohamad , Muhyiddin also faces the possibility of doing battle with Umno, the biggest party in his current alliance. “[The Allah issue] may be used by political parties or Malay nationalist leaders to discredit Perikatan Nasional and pull their support away easily,” Nadzri said. Also being closely watched are reactions from the prime minister’s allies in Sabah and Sarawak. Sarawak’s deputy chief minister James Masing – whose party is aligned with the government – on March 11 said it was “ridiculous” that the ruling alliance’s constituent parties were calling for the court ruling to be appealed. “It is my hope that we should allow men of religion and court to decide on religious issues and not politicians,” he was quoted as saying by local newspaper The Malay Mail .