KUALA LUMPUR: The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur is objecting to the applications made by various parties, mostly Islamic religious councils, to intervene in a suit over the word “Allah.”

Porres P. Royan, counsel for the archbishop, said this stand would apply to all the intervention applications filed, including one by the Malaysian Gurdwaras Council (MGC).

However, the lawyer qualified this by saying he would still have to seek instructions from his client before responding to the affidavits filed by MGC in its application to take part in the suit,

Other bodies that had sought to be parties to the judicial review application by the archbishop against the Internal Security Minister (now Home Minister) and the Government are the Islamic religious councils for the states of Penang, Terengganu, Perak, Federal Territories, Selangor and Kedah.

The Johor Islamic Religious Council also filed an application to intervene in the matter yesterday when the case was mentioned at the appellate and special powers division of the High Court here.

During the proceedings, Justice Lau Bee Lan allowed the Perak Islamic Religious and Malay Custom Council to withdraw its application.

Its counsel Mubashir Mansor informed the court that the council would file a fresh application before the next hearing date, which was fixed for Nov 21 when the judge would hear all the intervention applications.

Senior Federal Counsel Azizah Nawawi informed the court that the main respondents in the case – the minister and the Government – would only put in affidavits after the intervention applications had been disposed of.

Justice Lau ruled that the interveners only needed to reply to the main parties of the suit.

In the suit, the archbishop is seeking to quash the decision of the Internal Security Minister in a letter dated Feb 12, which imposed conditions on the publishing permit of The Herald, a Catholic weekly. Among the conditions was a prohibition on the use of the word “Allah.”

Apart from this application, the archbishop had also filed another civil suit seeking, among others, to declare that the word “Allah” is not exclusive to the religion of Islam.

This suit is still pending.