Christians 'fed up' with Bible blockade

Kuala Lumpur (AP):

The main Christian grouping in Muslim-majority Malaysia said yesterday it was "fed up" with the government's refusal to allow the distribution of tens of thousands of Bibles, saying this was an affront to religious freedoms.

The rare rebuke by the Christian Federation of Malaysia signals growing impatience among the religious minority in a years-old dispute over the government's ban on the use of the word 'Allah' as a translation for God in Malay-language Bibles and religious texts.

Other english texts allowed

The federation's chairman, Bishop Ng Moon Hing, said authorities are currently holding 30,000 Malay-language Bibles at a port on Borneo island. This was one of the latest attempts by Christians to import such Bibles, mainly from Indonesia, but none has been successful since March 2009. There are no similar problems with English-language texts.

Christians were "greatly dis-illusioned, fed up and angered by the repeated detention of Bibles," the federation said in a statement. "It would appear as if the authorities are waging a continuous, surreptitious and systematic programme against Christians in Malaysia to deny them access to the Bible" in the Malay language.