Islam in Malaysia He converted to Islam after marrying a princess from Pasai, of present-day Indonesia. The religion was adopted peacefully by the coastal trading ports people of Malaysia and Indonesia, absorbing rather than conquering existing beliefs. By the 15th and 16th centuries it was the majority faith of the Malay people. Currently, Islam is the state religion, specifically Shafi'ite school Sunnism. Some Islamic terms, such as the word Allah, are forbidden to non-Muslims both orally and in writing, which has created a controversy . In October 2013, the Malaysian Court of Appeal upheld the government's ban on the use of the word
Haram to form a wide range of other terms that have legal implications, such as "hariim" (a harem) and "ihraam" (a state of purity). In addition, the same word "(haram)" is used in the Quran to denote the sacred nature of the Ka'ba and the areas of Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. This category of sacred, holy, and inviolable also includes spouses and university campuses. As such, the legal use of the root ح-ر-م is based on an idea of boundaries between the profane and the sacred, as opposed to prohibitions, as is normally assumed. Colloquially, the word "haram" takes on different