The deputy prime minister said that Cabinet had yet to discuss the status of the seized Bibles.
His remarks come after DAP MP Tony Pua unveiled documents yesterday showing Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein had issued orders last June for the release of 5,100 Malay-language Bibles currently impounded at Port Klang.
The home minister had said over the weekend that the Bibles had been impounded due to the ministry’s pending court appeal on the Catholic weekly The Herald’s use of the word “Allah” in its publications.
But the Petaling Jaya Utara MP revealed that Hishammuddin, in his written reply to Parliament on June 7 last year, had announced that a notice had already been issued to the books’ importers urging them retrieve their consignment.
The Malaysian Insider also published a ministry letter dated June 10, 2010, where a senior official wrote that the appeal by the book’s importer, Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM), had been considered and the ministry had agreed to release the consignment.
Muhyiddin appeared today to deny knowledge of any approval.
“We will discuss in Cabinet this week. Cabinet has yet to discuss,” he said during a press conference today.
The Malaysian Insider had reported that Christian groups had been given conflicting instructions concerning the release of the Bibles shipped in from Indonesia and seized by Customs officers in March 2009 because they contained the word “Allah”.
The matter is a touchy issue in Malaysia where Islam is the official religion and Muslim officials are against non-Islamic religious books printed in Bahasa Malaysia or containing the word “Allah”, the name of god in the faith which is outlawed for use by other religions.
It is understood that Christian leaders had broached the matter with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak at the Christmas open house last year.
The BSM imported 5,000 Alkitab Berita Baik from Indonesia on March 23, 2009, but the Malay Bibles together with 100 copies of other Christian literature were confiscated and detained by the Home Ministry at Port Klang.
BSM’s repeated attempts to clear up the confusion with the ministry helmed by Hishammuddin — who oversees the Immigration and Customs departments — at its highest-level of command have been met with sympathy but not action.
There is also a similar incident involving another Christian group, the Gideons, which had its shipment of 10,000 Malay-language Bibles detained in Kuching in 2009; but had the confiscation order lifted after Putrajaya intervened directly.
BSM was reported as saying that it has a strong legal case.
But being a Christian organisation, it is reluctant to take legal action unless forced to, like what the Catholic Church did with its Herald newspaper case.
The group noted that the Court of Appeal’s delay in hearing the controversial “Allah” suit, 15 months after the High Court ruled Christians have a constitution right to use the word, and that it had impacted on its case as well.
