Kuala Lampur, January 17: In the latest spate of retaliatory attacks in the multi-ethic country, a Malaysian mosque was vandalized, as tension continued to grow over allowing Catholics to use word “Allah” for God.
“Broken glass was found outside a mosque,” Malaysia’s deputy police chief Ismail Omar told.
Ismail said attackers threw several bottles of glasses on the mosque in Borneo island state of Sarawak. “Don’t make any speculation,” he told Reuters.
“We are investigating this incident.”
Malaysian Muslims Protect Churches
The deputy police chief did not confirm whether the bottles thrown at the mosque were that of alcoholic beverages, but said he believes the incident was an act of vandalism.
“I do not want to say anything more.”
The attack came a day after a Protestant church was vandalized in a new spate of attacks triggered by a row over the use of the word “Allah”.
Windows of the two-storey church in southern Negeri Sembilan state, on the Malay peninsula, were found to have been smashed.
The row, which toke an escalating turn last week, stems from a court ruling that allowed a Catholic newspaper to use the word “Allah” in its Malay-language editions.
This stirred a massive Muslim protests nationwide and a number of attacks on churches.
Tension
Police warned against using the latest attacks to fuel the already tensed situation in the multiracial country.
“The situation remains peaceful and no one should take advantage of this to create something bad,” Ismail told Reuters.
The government has warned that laws, including the Internal Security Act that allows detention without trial, would be deployed to keep tensions from boiling over.
A 25-year-old Malay student was charged in court on Friday with threatening public safety following a comment he reportedly made on his Facebook page offering to throw petrol bombs.
Though opinions are split, many Malays are angry over allowing Catholics to use the word “Allah” for God.
A page created in the online networking site Facebook to protest the use of the word by non-Muslims has so far attracted more than 220,000 users.
Some 70 Muslim-Malay groups are also planning to submit a memorandum on Monday appealing for intervention from the titular Malay rulers who oversee Islamic affairs in their respective states.
Religion and language are sensitive issues in multiethnic Malaysia.
Dubbed as a potpourri of cultures, the Asian country has long been held up as a model of peaceful co-existence among different races and religions.
Muslim Malays make up more than 60 percent of Malaysia’s 28 million people, while Christians constitute 9 percent.
Buddhists and Hindus make up around 19.2 and 6.3 percent of the populace respectively.
-Agencies