CEOAFRICA gathered that a Malaysian court has ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to God, even in their own faiths.

The appeals court said the term Allah must be exclusive to Islam or it could cause public disorder.

Christians have argued that they have used the word, which entered Malaysia from Arabic, to refer to their God for centuries and that the ruling violates their rights.

It came after the government said that a Catholic newspaper, The Herald, could not use the word in its Malaysia-language edition to describe the Christian God.

The newspaper sued, and a court ruled in their favour in December 2009. The government then launched an appeal.

According to sources, chief judge Mohamed Apandi Ali said: "The usage of the word Allah is not an integral part of the faith in Christianity. The usage of the word will cause confusion in the community."

The newspaper's supporters have argued that Malay-language Bibles have used Allah to refer to the Christian God since before Malaysia was formed as a federal state in 1963.

"Allah is a term in the Middle East and in Indonesia it is a term both for Christians and Muslims. You cannot say that in all of the sudden it is not an integral part. Malay language is a language that has many borrowed words; Allah also is a borrowed word."

However, some Muslim groups have said that the Christian use of the word Allah could be used to encourage Muslims to convert to Christianity.