Church Bombings Raise Fear Level for Christians In Malaysia

Have spent time in Malaysia as well as having some family friends who are Malaysian, I found this news very surprising:

Would-be arsonists in mostly Muslim Malaysia struck at a convent school and a fifth church on Sunday while church leaders called for calm in a row over Christians’ use of the word “Allah” to refer to God.

The attacks threaten Prime Minister Najib Razak’s plan to win back non-Muslim support before elections due by 2013 and may scare investors away from Malaysia that has trailed Thailand and Indonesia for foreign investment.

Police in the sleepy city of Taiping, around 300 km (185 miles) from the capital Kuala Lumpur, said a petrol bomb was thrown at the guard house of a Catholic convent school but failed to go off.

They also said they had found several broken bottles including paint thinners outside one of the country’s oldest Anglican churches, All Saints, Taiping, and said one of the building’s walls had been blackened.

The row, over a court ruling that allowed a Catholic newspaper to use “Allah” in its Malay-language editions, had prompted Muslims to protest at mosques and sparked arson attacks on four churches that saw one Pentecostalist church gutted.

On Sunday, Malaysians packed churches to listen to sermons of “reaching out in friendship to all, including Muslims” and “keeping the peace in multi-religious Malaysia” but many felt their religious rights were being trampled.

“There are extremists in this country and the government seems unable to do anything,” said Wilson Matayun, a salesman who attended Mass at St Anthony’s Church in Kuala Lumpur. “I am losing faith in our government. I pray it does not get worse.”

Matayun is from Sabah state on Borneo island, where a large number of non-English speaking Christians have used the word “Allah” for decades. Christians account for 9.1 percent of the 28 million population.  [Reuters]

Malaysia has three main ethnic groups: Malays, Chinese, and Indian.  Almost all the Malays are Muslim, the Chinese are mostly Buddhist, and the Indians mostly Hindu.  However, since the Malay Peninsula has been colonized by the Portugese, the Dutch, and the British Christianity has also found believers in the country.   It makes since that non-English people would use the word Allah even though they are Christian because of the word being adapted in every day use by the Muslim majority.

Malaysia does have Sharia law, but it only applies to Muslims and even with them it is not strictly enforced.  Something else to keep in mind is that the Malaysians have a very different version of Shariah law compared to a country like Saudi Arabia, which is ultra-extreme about it.  However, there are a few religious fundamentalists that cause problems from time to time in the mainly northern part of Malaysia, which just happens to be where these fire bombings are happening.  Think of these guys like the Christian fundamentalists that bomb abortion clinics.  That has largely been stopped here in the US and hopefully the Malaysian authorities can stop these church bombings.

It is kind of ironic that this news is happening now after Malaysia was just voted in the Top 10 of the World’s Most Friendliest Countries.