Shah Alam parliamentarian Khalid Samad is of the opinion that the state enactment that prohibits the use of the word ‘Allah’ and other words related to Islam is outdated.

The PAS political bureau head said the enactment needs to be discussed and reworked. "In my opinion it is outdated and it actually conflicts with the efforts to propagate Islam. I call upon those involved to sit down and discuss the enactment and be open to reworking it."

NONE Khalid ( right ) who was speaking at a press conference in his office today, warned that implementing something blindly just because it was already decided upon was not a policy that should be practiced by Muslims.

"More so as enactments are administrative laws and not unquestionable edicts," he added.

Opining that such laws were formulated at a time when the understanding of Muslims was still doubtful, Khalid said that the Enactment on Non-Islamic Religions (Restrictions of propagation among those of Islamic faith) passed in 1988, should be revisited.

Other than prohibiting the use of the term ‘Allah’, the act which was formulated nearly two decades ago, also prohibits the use of 24 other words including, Ilahi , wahyu , imam and nabi .

Two weeks ago, Selangor Umno sent a memorandum to the Selangor Sultan to ask the head of state to intervene in the ongoing ‘Allah’ row between the home ministry and the Catholic Church.

Last week, the sultan had issued a decree that all parties involved in the row respect the ban on the use of the controversial word by non-Muslims.

‘I am not disrespecting sultan’

On a related matter, Khalid also refuted allegations that he is disrespecting the Selangor Sultan by dragging the Selangor Islamic Affairs Department (Jais) and the Selangor Islamic Affairs Council (Mais) into the political debate. Both institutions are under the sultan’s purview.

"I categorically deny that accusation. In fact, my speech was meant to stop those who seek to manipulate this issue for their own purposes and from using said institutions under His Majesty’s purview for their own political gains."

He stressed that his advice and caution was meant to prevent the sultan’s name from being dragged through the mud by irresponsible acts.

"I am not the one who started dragging these institutions into political debate," he stressed.

Khalid was commenting on the police report made against him on Monday by 16 NGOs accusing him of disrespecting the sultan.

He also reiterated his earlier call for the leadership of Jais and Mais to be replaced with those who were more respectable and viable.