VIDEO | 5:42 min

The Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM) is pleading to the state to return seized Bible copies, as there is no link to BSM propagating Christianity to Muslims.

Calling himself “the first non-Muslim to be arrested by the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (Jais)”, BSM president Lee Min Choon today said that his Bible customers were the churches and if Jais’ actions were permitted, it would lead to a “precarious situation” for non-Muslims in the country.

Lee was hauled up to the police station together with his manager Sinclair Wong last week when Jais raided the BSM office in Damansara and seized some 300 copies of the Bible in Bahasa Malaysia and Iban.

“Let me state for the record I don’t read the Al-Kitab... apart from the cover, I don’t read it, I am not a Malay-speaking Christian... but my office manager and I were arrested,” Lee told reporters at the PJ Hilton in the first official briefing by BSM since last week’s incident.

“If the complaints Jais received are true about propagating to Muslims using the Al-Kitab... during the raid, we were not asked any questions about this.”

Lee said BSM, operating since 1985, was simply a Bible supplier.

“We buy Bibles and we supply Bibles to churches. We have a range of Bibles in all languages in our Bible Society to meet the needs of more than 1 million Malay-speaking Christians in this country. So we do not engage in propagation, we supply Bibles to Christians in the churches,” he said.    

BSM secretary-general Simon Wong also said that copies of the Malay-language Bible using the banned word ‘Allah’ have existed since 1629.   

Lee said that since the raid, BSM has met with federal government officers but not Selangor state officials.

For the sake of religious freedom in Malaysia, he now urged for the return of the seized copies of the Bible and clarification of Jais’s authority to act on non-Muslims, so that the case can be closed.

“The longer it drags on, the more unhealthy it will be to the peace and harmony of Malaysian society,”  Lee said. “There should be a return of Bible copies that were seized by Jais to our Bible Society... There should be respect for the 10-point solution.”

Lee said he had chosen to assemble reporters at the PJ Hilton, as this was the place where he had personally participated in the 10-point solution which was hammered out three years ago. The agreement was confirmed by Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s cabinet and in its written form was agreed to by the Christian community in the country.

‘Agreements are meant to be honoured’

“Agreements as we know in law, are meant to be honoured, not lightly broken,” Lee said.

He questioned if Jais had acted outside of its authority and disagreed with the state government’s defence of the Islamic group’s use of standard operating procedure (SOP).

He worried that if copies the Malay-language Bible can be so-called lawfully seized from non-Muslims, then this would open the pandora’s box for religious persecution in Malaysia.

“If that is the case they are justified in entering churches to look for Bibles, entering houses of individual Christians looking for Malay Bibles.

“And this puts Christians, not only BSM, but Christians and churches in a precarious situation. This is not a solution to the problem that we face and the BSM urges responsible parties to find realistic solutions to this problem.”