|PIC1|Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar said the government had made a mistake in enacting the gazette on the issue, The Sun Daily reports.
He said on Saturday the government's decision to ban the use of the word "Allah" in the publication remained until the court decided otherwise.
"There is a judicial review on the matter and we leave it to the court to decide. I think there was a mistake in enacting the gazette. When we make a mistake I must admit that there is a need to look at it thoroughly.
"As there was a mistake ... so it is better we make a correction," he told reporters on Saturday, Bernama reported.
Syed Hamid was commenting on the call by the Malaysian Islamic Da'wah Foundation (Yadim) on Saturday urging the government to withdraw permission for the conditional use of the word "Allah" in Christian publications.
The order was signed by the Home Minister on January 21, 2009.
When contacted, the magazine's editor Fr Lawrence Andrew said he did not want to comment on the issue because the Church had yet to receive any documents about the withdrawal of the gazette.
On the front page of today's edition of the Herald, an article 'Allah' comes under the surveillance of ISA" said "the apparent relief that we imagined we were able to enjoy has been short lived."
"The use of the word 'Allah' is not new to the Church in Malaysia. We have been using 'Allah' for centuries. So have Catholics who use Malay prayer books of more than one hundred years, which contain the word 'Allah'.
"Malay was already the popular language of the Church in Malaya before the turn of the 20th century and prior to the colonisation of our country Malaya by the British."
The article was accompanied by a picture of two pages from an 1894 prayer book used in Malaysia which shows the word "Allah".
Source: CathNews