Eight Malaysian Muslims have been arrested for an attack on a church in the capital Kuala Lumpur on 7 January.
The firebombing was the first and the most serious in a series of 11 such attacks. The attacks were prompted by a supreme court ruling at the end of last year which struck down a government ban on the use of the word "Allah" by Malaysian Christians.
Allah has been used as the name of God in Malay-language Bibles for centuries without major opposition either in Malaysia or in neighbouring Indonesia, whose language is closely related to Malay.
The government ban was reportedly introduced to increase its support among the country's ethnic Malays, who make up 60 percent of Malaysia's population of 28 million. Most Malays are Muslims, while the Chinese and Indian minorities practise Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism.
Photo: Roman Catholic church in Kuala Lumpur (Flickr / bernardoh)
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