PUTRAJAYA: The Herald, the Catholic Church's weekly newsletter, has exhausted all legal avenues to use the word "Allah" to refer to God in its publication after the Federal Court denied its application for leave to appeal the Court's earlier decision on Wednesday.
A five-member Federal Court panel chaired by Justice Tan Sri Abdull Hamid Embong unanimously dismissed the Herald's review application after ruling that it had failed to meet the threshold requirement for review set out in Rule 137 of the Federal Court Rules 1995.
He said there was no occurrence of any procedural unfairness in the Federal Court's previous decision in refusing to grant leave to the Herald to appeal.
Abdull Hamid said settled case law stated that an applicant could not to review the decision of the Federal Court except in rare cirumstances, namely if there was occurrence of biasness, quorum failure, fraud or occurrence of procedural unfairness.
He said the rationale behind this strict approach established over a century ago in England, was that a decision should be final and should rest, otherwise there would be no end, Bernama reported.
Meanwhile, Father Lawrence Andrew (pic), Herald editor said that the "door was closed" in their fight to use the word Allah in the publication, and was disappointed with the Court's decision.
"Definitely we are disappointed. Our counsel argued very well on procedural unfairness but the judgement ruled it's not a case," he told reporters outside the courtroom after the decision was read.
He said that Malaysia would have to work towards living in harmony and at the same time hoped that the rights of minorities would not be trampled on.
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