KLANG (MALAYSIA), Jan 19: In recent weeks, Malaysian priest Lawrence Andrew has been burned in effigy, investigated for sedition and denounced by Muslims in a spiralling dispute over whether Malay-speaking Christians can use “Allah” to refer to their God.
No one is more taken aback by this than Andrew, a bookish, cheerful 68-year-old Jesuit who has become a reluctant symbol for religious equality in the Muslim-majority nation.
“I never asked for this,” Andrew, an ethnic Indian, told reporters before recent Sunday services at his church in a scruffy section of the port city Klang.
“It didn’t even cross my mind. Our programme is all about love.”
Andrew was thrust into the spotlight in Malaysia’s often tense inter-religious relations in 2007 when the Government ordered the Catholic weekly Herald to stop using the Arabic word “Allah” in its Malay section.
Andrew founded the thin, 15,000-circulation paper — which also has English, Chinese and Tamil sections — in 1994.
He still edits it in a modest office in Kuala Lumpur shared with a Catholic bookstore. Andrew is the son of a Catholic immigrant former rubber plantation manager from Kerala.
The Herald challenged the ban, and the ongoing see-saw legal battle triggered a spate of attacks in 2010 on places of worship — mostly churches — including with petrol bombs.
Tensions are rising yet again in the multi-faith country.
Muslims make up 60 per cent of multi-ethnic Malaysia’s 28 million people, while Christians account for about nine per cent. (AGENCIES)
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