Malaysian police yesterday announced the arrest of eight men who allegedly attacked a Christian church with a firebomb — the first suspects in a spate of unprecedented assaults on churches that raised religious tensions in this Muslim-majority nation.
The attacks on 11 churches and a Sikh temple followed a Dec. 31 court verdict that allowed non-Muslims to use the word “Allah” to refer to God. The verdict upset many ethnic Malay Muslims who insist that letting Christians use the word could confuse some Muslims and entice them to convert.
The dispute has strained ties between Malays, who make up nearly two-thirds of Malaysia’s 28 million people, and minorities who complain about what they say is institutionalized religious discrimination.
Authorities have detained eight suspects since Tuesday in connection to a Jan. 7 attack on Kuala Lumpur’s Metro Tabernacle Church, which had its office gutted by fire, said Bakri Zinin, the federal police chief of criminal investigations.
It was the first and most serious of all the attacks on churches.
“We believe that we solved this case,” Bakri told a news conference.
The suspects were all Malays from 21 to 26 years old, according to a police statement. Police tracked them down after one of them sought treatment at a hospital for burn injuries, Bakri said.
They could be charged with “mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy” a place of worship, which is punishable by a maximum 20-year prison sentence and a fine. Police have obtained a court order to detain the men for at least a week pending further investigation.
The disquiet centers on a court ruling in which the Herald, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Church in Malaysia, argued it has the right to use the word “Allah” in its Malay-language edition because the word predates Islam and is used by Christians in other predominantly Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Indonesia and Syria.
The verdict overturned a government ban on the use of the word in non-Muslim publications.
The government has appealed the decision while also condemning the church attacks and pledging to uphold freedom of religion guaranteed to minorities by the Constitution.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
Millions of dollars have poured into bets on who will win the US presidential election after a last-minute court ruling opened up gambling on the vote, upping the stakes on a too-close-to-call race between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former US president Donald Trump that has already put voters on edge. Contracts for a Harris victory were trading between 48 and 50 percent in favor of the Democrat on Friday on Interactive Brokers, a firm that has taken advantage of a legal opening created earlier this month in the country’s long running regulatory battle over election markets. With just a month
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RSS