Malaysia's highest court has upheld a government ban against a Roman Catholic newspaper using the world "Allah" to refer to God.
The Federal Court ruled in a four-to-three decision Monday that the church's Malay-language newspaper, The Herald, had no grounds to appeal a lower court decision last year that Allah should be reserved exclusively for Muslims, because if other religions use the word, it could be confusing and lead Muslims to convert.
Such conversion is illegal in Malaysia where more than 60 percent of the population of 30 million are Muslim - the country's official religion. Just over 9 percent are Christian.