Original Source: The Boston Globe
Wire Service: Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/article/instant-article/idINIndia-38445120090311
Reciting the Catholic Creed, the 1,800-strong congregation attending mass at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral on Borneo island intones in Malay: "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of Allah."
These Malaysian Catholics, like their brethren in Indonesia, have used the word "Allah" in place of "God" since converting to Christianity in the 19th century.
But now the government in this mostly Muslim Southeast Asian nation of 27 million people wants to prevent "Allah" being used by Christians, saying it is subversive and aims to convert Muslims.
Christians fear this is just the thin edge of the wedge.
"The government of West Malaysia has an infection of religious hatred. We have to fight back so it does not spread," said Bishop Cornelius Piong after Sunday Mass at the cathedral in the heart of a rice-growing district in eastern Sabah state.
Christianity is practiced by 9.1 percent of the Malaysian population, according to the 2000 census, the most recently available figures. Many of them, like Bishop Piong, come from ethnic groups such as the Kadazandusun, Dayaks, Ibans and Bidayuh who live in the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak.
"Our worship of Allah is so natural, it is part and parcel of the Kadazandusun people here," Piong said.
The row over the use of Allah to describe the Christian God feeds into a long-running feud over conversions between the government of a country where all Malays must be Muslims and other faiths, such as Hinduism and Buddhism that are practiced by ethnic Indians and Chinese.