However, despite efforts at maintaining peaceful inter-religious coexistence
by both the authority and civil societies and private individuals,
the harmony had been breached from time to time. Three recent ‘incidents’
can be quoted for the purpose of this paper. The first was the
series of attacks on places of worship that took place some two years
ago. Though, as mentioned by Martinez (2001), there were some incidents
earlier in 2001, attacks that took place towards the end of 2009
and early 2010 posed serious threat to security of the country. These
attacks were related to events that took place earlier. On December 10,
2007, the Malaysian government banned the Malay language section of
a Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald, for using the word ‘Allah’ as aMalay translation for God. The authorities’ reasoning was that the use of
the word ‘Allah’ would confuse Muslims. Following a warning that the
authorities would revoke its permit if it continued using the word ‘Allah’
in the Malay language section of its newspaper, The Catholic Herald
filed a suit challenging the warning. Three points were raised in the law
suit. The court made its decision on 31 December 2009 over those
issues: that the government’s action in prohibiting The Catholic Herald
from using the word ‘Allah’ is illegal, null and void; that the Archbishop
as publisher of The Catholic Herald is entitled to use the word ‘Allah’;
and lastly, that the word ‘Allah’ is not exclusive to the religion of Islam.