After having been invited to meet Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak yesterday, representatives from the Association of Churches Sarawak (ACS) are now scheduled to meet PR’s top leaders for discussion this morning.
The ACS is an umbrella body comprising churches in Sarawak including the Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, Salvation Army, SIB and several others.
Among those who are expected to be present are PR and PKR de facto leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng and PAS secretary-general Datuk Mustafa Ali.
According to an SMS blast from the DAP yesterday evening, the breakfast meeting will take place at Kingwood Inn in Jalan Padungan here.
DAP national publicity chief Tony Pua told The Malaysian Insider that the meeting had been arranged at PR’s request.
Yesterday, Najib held an hour-long meeting with 14 church leaders from the ACS to discuss issues like the ongoing Alkitab row and several other grouses affecting ties between the church and the government.
According to ACS secretary-general Ambrose Linang, this is the first time a prime minister had personally initiated such discussions with church leaders in Sarawak, which is home to the country’s largest Christian population.
The meeting comes as BN is facing its toughest battle yet to retain its hold over the hornbill state, which goes to polls this Saturday.
But Ambrose said the prime minister had avoided the issue of politics during the meet at Hilton Hotel here and confined the discussion to the Alkitab row and other issues affecting ties between the Church and the State.
Najib at his meeting with church leaders yesterday, April 13, 2011. — Picture by Choo Choy May
According to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala, Najib had given the church leaders his personal promise that his administration would never again impound bibles.
Christian furore was sparked off following the Home Ministry’s move to impound two separate consignments of the holy books at Port Klang and Kuching port here as they contained the word “Allah”.
The government is still locked in a legal dispute with the Catholic Church on the use of the word “Allah” to refer to God by non-Muslims as Islamic enactments in 10 states prohibit this practice.
With the Sarawak polls looming the BN administration scrambled to pacify the church community and relented to its demands by ordering the release of the books and later drafting the 10-point solution to resolve all future disputes in the matter.
The solution however stipulates two separate sets of rules for Christians living on either side of the South China Sea.
For those in Sabah and Sarawak, the distribution and printing of such books were allowed due to the large Christian community.
When asked if the church had accepted the prime minister’s solution, Jala nodded and said the church had “no problems with it.”
“The fact of the matter is that the bibles are no longer impounded and there are no more bibles in custody,” he pointed out.
“Beyond the Bible issue, the government is committed to have dialogue with the Christian groups and other religious groups to resolve this issue.
“To underscore the urgency of this work the PM is meeting up with Christian leaders and they have also made commitment to meet up with the CFM,” he added.
Malaysian Insider
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