What's in a name? asked William Shakespeare. Quite a lot, according to Malaysia's high court. This week it upheld a ban on non-Muslims using the word "Allah". The court rejected a challenge by the Roman Catholic Church to overturn the ban decreed by a lower court
Amnesty International is worried what the ruling indicates about freedom of speech, religious expression and minority rights in what is widely regarded as one of Asia's most liberal and future facing countries.
I believe that on this ruling Malaysia has got it wrong both politically and religiously.
It is accepted that the increasingly hard line adopted against Christian and other minorities in Malaysia is a pandering by the government to extreme-right Muslim parties.Those supporting the ban offer arguments that it will preserve the fabric of Malaysian society.
The irony is that the ruling actually makes tensions more not less likely by exacerbating differences and dividing communities, focusing on exclusivity and even feeding a sense of superiority, a sense of entitlement by birth rather than by merit and deed.
The paradox to the sense of superiority, is that it demonstrates an insecurity of identity. Are some Muslims so flimsy in their faith that they might get confused by the use of the word Allah? And if so, why aren't Muslim scholars doing more?
This new infatuation with religious superiority will diminish Malaysia's leadership as a rising star of Asia that has great economic growth and is trying to create a new kind of society. All it needs to do is to return to its constitution instead of trying to pander to the extremist vote.
Religiously, the ruling makes no sense at all. Islam has never claimed a monopoly on Allah. If anything Quranic texts demonstrate that Islam is a continuation of the previous Abrahamic faiths. Allah is designed to be inclusive. We should be happier for more people to use the word Allah than fewer.
Shockingly, Bibles that are already printed and include the word Allah will be destroyed. This contravenes constitutional guarantees for minorities, as well as the Islamic spirit of respecting other people's worship, in particular that of Christians and Jews. I feel as sick thinking of Muslims destroying the religious books of others, as I do of right wing Islamophobes making lurid claims of burning the Quran.
Malaysia has viable aspirations to be a leader of the Muslim world. But such a basic misunderstanding of the laws of inclusivity, of the historical linguistic relations between Muslim nations and their non-Muslim minorities, and most of all for what is clearly a ruling that both lay and clerical Muslims around the world find baffling, is raising question marks over its potential leadership.
What I find most disturbing about this ruling – and the political wrongness, and the even greater religious incorrectness are pretty hard to trump – comes from my own experience as a Muslim living as a minority and seeing the situation in reverse. As Muslim minorities we rightly expect to have the words we use, the clothes we wear, the food we eat and the way we worship protected. These nations are our home nations. When hostility levels are raised, it is a source of comfort that the Muslim world rises to protest on behalf of the rights of minority Muslims. The non-Muslim minorities in Malaysia are asking for nothing different.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www.spirit21.co.uk