Herald website hacked as ‘Allah’ battle intensifies

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 — The online version of the Catholic weekly Herald was hacked twice since last night, two days after a High Court decision allowing Catholics to use “Allah” to describe the Christian God in the national language.

Father Lawrence Andrew, the priest-editor of the weekly, told The Malaysian Insider today that they first discovered technical disturbances on their website at 1am today.

“My technician had it sorted by this morning but then the problem started again early this evening. I can’t really tell you what the problem is but my technician confirms that we were hacked,” he said.

Andrew also disclosed that the website is now operating normally after the last attack was successfully neutralised.

Asked to comment on the incident, the St Anne Churh parish priest calmly replied it was best that he kept silent.

“I don’t want to say anything. I don’t want to add to the tension as this issue is a very sensitive one,” he said.

“It has been a long day,” he added in reference to the intensifying uproar over the court ruling.

Earlier in Penang, some 250 Umno Youth members took to the street to protest against the court ruling in front of the state’s High Court building.

Observers told The Malaysian Insider that protestors shouted “seditious” obscenities in protest against a ruling they described as an attempt to confuse Muslims.

In the virtual world, groups opposing the ruling have begun using popular social networking website like Facebook to rally support and call for the ruling’s reversal.

Muslim politicians from both sides of the divide are also up in arms over the Dec 31 decision by Justice Datuk Lau Bee Lan, expressing worry it could confuse Muslims who make up the majority of Malaysia’s 27 million population.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has appealed for calm, saying the Home Ministry will appeal against the ruling, indicating that the fight for Christians to use ‘Allah’ is far from over.

For Andrew, all this will only make his work to serve his community more difficult.

“So it’s best to keep silent,” he added.