Federal Court decision leaves much to be desired, say church's lawyers

The Federal Court decision to ban the usage of the word 'Allah' has left many issues unanswered, said lawyers representing the Catholic Church.

Lead counsel for the Catholic Church, Datuk Cyrus Das said that despite apex court having for the first time a seven-judges panel presiding over a 4-3 ruling, the court had failed to clarify important issues in the case such as the scope of the ban.

"I'm afraid the confusion continues as an opportunity has been lost in testing the scope of the judgement in court of appeal.

"As one of the dissenting judges (the chief justice of Sabah and Sarawak) pointed out correctly, Court of Appeal seems to suggest that it is a decision not just confined to The Herald but it is a ban generally, which means it cannot be used by Non-Muslims whether in West or East Malaysia," he told reporters.

Cyrus also pointed out that another issue that ought to have been clarified but was not was the scope of Article 3 of the Constitution, which declares Islam as religion of federation but also encompasses a guarantee that it would not affect other religions to be practiced in peace and harmony.

"That was missed out," he said.

The third issue that the Federal Court had not considered was whether the correct 'test' was applied on a minister's decision, said Cyrus.

"The problem that we had was in Court of Appeal was that they created a new test which was a fusion test which was subjectively and objective. Whereas the trend of case law has always been that the minister's decision should be open to review on an objective manner."