KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) — The insurgents came at midday, walking across a canal, advancing under cover of mortar fire toward the cluster of three Iraqi villages.

Within eight hours, Shiite residents who fled said the Sunni insurgents had expelled thousands of them from the majority-Sunni province, helped by local Sunnis in neighboring villages.

"You cannot imagine what happened, only if you saw it could you believe it," said Hassan Ali, a 52-year-old farmer siting in the al-Zahra Shiite mosque, used to distribute aid in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, where the displaced had fled, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) away.

"They hit us with mortars and mortars, and the families fled, and they kept hitting us. It was completely sectarian. The Shiites, out," he said.

The attacks took place on June 16 in the neighboring villages of Chardaghli, Brawchi and Karanaz, as well as a fourth village, Beshir, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) to the north, said the displaced residents. All places were home to Shiite Turkmen, an ethnically distinct minority who speak their own language and are scattered through Iraq.

Over a dozen displaced residents in Kirkuk and the nearby Shiite Turkmen town of Taza Khormato gave The Associated Press near identical accounts of the expulsions. It was not possible, however, to independently confirm the incidents because Sunni insurgents now control of the villages.

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In this picture taken Friday, June 20, 2014, Iraqi Shiite Turkmen gunmen gather as they prepare to p …

The expulsions show how Iraq's sectarian mosaic is unraveling in particularly hateful ways, unseen since the mid-2000s when sectarian killings nearly plunged the country into civil war.

The difference this time around is the lack of a U.S. military presence. At the time, when Iraq spiraled toward a sectarian civil war, U.S.-led troops fought both Sunni and Shiite extremists, eventually brokering an uneasy peace until foreign troops withdrew in 2011.

The expulsions appeared to be part of a plan to create a Sunni-dominated territory from the Syrian border to Baghdad's edge.

The rough plan appears to have emerged after insurgents, led by fighters of the al-Qaida inspired Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, began sweeping through Iraq on June 9, seizing the country's second largest city of Mosul and heading southward into Iraq's Sunni heartland.

The three Turkmen Shiite villages were in Salahuddin, a central province that links the west to the capital.

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FILE - In this June 20, 2014, file photo, Kurdish peshmerga fighters takes their positions behind sa …

Expulsions from those villages were preceded, just days earlier, by insurgents seizing the Turkmen-dominated city of Tal Afar near the Syrian border. There, they burnt down Shiite homes.

The Islamic State fighters consider Shiites to be heretics, and proudly post images of them being killed — often for no reason other than their beliefs.

But even less-ideological Sunni groups that are fighting alongside the extremists have grievances against Shiites, and see them as an obstacle to having a more autonomous territory.

They deeply resent the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The litany is long: harassment by security forces; lacking political representation, disenfranchisement, and neglect of Sunni provinces.

The first mortar shell to hit the three villages in Salahuddin exploded just after lunch on Monday, the displaced said. Residents were worried: villagers had seen jeeps race into the Sunni village of Yenkeje across the canal.

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In this picture taken Friday, June 20, 2014, a Kurdish peshmerga sniper takes his position behind sa …

Shiites watched from rooftops as insurgents poured out of their vehicles under cover fire and steadily advanced toward the village, the displaced residents said.

When villagers first fled toward the nearby Sunni villages of Bir Ahmad and Bastamli, they realized that insurgents were also firing mortars at them from that direction. Attempts to flee south to the Shiite village of Brawchi were in vain — it too was under attack. Rooftop snipers in the nearby Sunni village of Albu Hassan shot at them as they ran, they said.

Men, women and children were killed in the melee, three residents said.

"Among them was an old man and a woman, children, youths," said farmer Ali.

Days after they were killed, after pleading interventions to Sunni tribal leaders, the insurgents agreed to dump the bodies on a roadside for collection. The displaced residents say between 15 and 25 people were killed.

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In this picture taken Saturday, June 21, 2014, Abu Falah, a 38-year-old Iraqi Shiite Turkmen, lies o …

"They called and said: send somebody to collect your dogs," a 35-year-old villager, Abu Falah, said, lying in bed at the home of relatives in Kirkuk. A policeman, he was wounded in a recent suicide bombing, and his leg was reinforced with metal screws.

Farmer Ali said he helped bury the dead, which he said numbered 20, in a mass grave in the nearby town of Toz Khormato, controlled by Kurdish forces. It was where many displaced Shiites initially fled to on Monday night, before drifting to Kirkuk, also controlled by Kurdish forces, but considered safer.

On the same day the three villages came under attack, Sunni insurgents also attacked nearby Turkmen Shiite village of Beshir. Within hours, about 7,000 people fled, under sniper fire as they passed neighboring Sunni villages, displaced residents said. Kirkuk police chief Torhan Abdul-Rahim corroborated the story.

Residents from each village said that after they left, their Sunni neighbors burned down their homes, set fire to their wheat, and stole their sheep. They said insurgents also blew up some Shiite mosques. They said they knew of the looting because other Sunnis, opposed to the sectarian violence, were calling to update them.

One medical clinic manager from Beshir who requested anonymity, fearing his neighbors, said he had worked with residents of the nearby Sunni village of Muamaleh for years.

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In this picture taken Saturday, June 21, 2014, Shiite Iraqi Turkmen girls and boys who fled their vi …

"If you serve somebody for twenty years, could you betray them? Let their bodies be eaten by dogs?" he grieved from a relative's small house in Kirkuk, where he now lives packed into a few rooms with five other families.

It wasn't immediately possible to contact people who had remained in the villages. Fleeing Shiites said they feared retribution if they provided telephone numbers. They also said they wanted to protect those still providing them with information.

Community leaders were trying to account for the thousands of displaced, and some residents were presumed dead.

"Awn Qassim, my brother-in-law, he has seven children, nobody can find him," said Ayad Suleiman, 28, from Beshir. "Please tell the Red Cross," he asked.

Within days of the reported expulsions, more of the threads keeping Iraq together unraveled.

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In this picture taken Friday, June 20, 2014, Iraqi Shiite Turkmen gunmen stand on their vehicle as t …

Abdul-Rahim, the Kirkuk police chief, said residents of three Sunni villages close to frontline combat fled into Sunni-majority areas, fearing retribution by Shiites.

Now, in Taza Khormato, only armed men remain defending the pastel-colored homes in the Turkmen Shiite town. The men evacuated their wives and children, fearing attacks.

In one house, men distributed shiny assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. Gunmen patrol the town's entrance, emblazoned with a poster of an Iraqi soldier standing atop an insurgent's flag.

"We won't let anybody enter this village," said Yashar Hussein, 41, carrying two pistols. "Even if everybody dies."

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Follow Diaa Hadid at: twitter.com/diaahadid

'They hit us with mortars and mortars'

The expulsions of Iraqi Shiites show how the country is unraveling in ways unseen since the mid-2000s.
Lack of U.S. military presence

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli warplanes bombed a series of targets inside Syria early on Monday, the Israeli military said, in response to a cross-border attack that killed an Israeli teenager the previous day.

In all, Israel said it struck nine military targets inside Syria, and "direct hits were confirmed."

The targets were located near the site of Sunday's violence in the Golan Heights and included a regional military command center and unspecified "launching positions." There was no immediate response from Syria.

In Sunday's attack, an Israeli civilian vehicle was struck by forces in Syria as it drove in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. A teenage boy was killed and two other people were wounded in the first deadly incident along the volatile Israeli-Syrian front since Syria's civil war erupted more than three years ago. The Israeli vehicle was delivering water as it was doing contract work for Israel's Defense Ministry when it was struck.

"Yesterday's attack was an unprovoked act of aggression against Israel, and a direct continuation to recent attacks that occurred in the area," said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman. He said the military "will not tolerate any attempt to breach Israel's sovereignty and will act in order to safeguard the civilians of the state of Israel."

The sudden burst of violence has added to the tense situation in Israel, where forces have spent the past week and half in a broad ground operation in the West Bank in search of three teenage boys believed to have been abducted by Hamas militants.

Israel has carefully monitored the fighting in Syria, but has generally kept its distance and avoided taking sides. On several occasions, mortar shells and other types of fire have landed on the Israeli side of the de facto border, drawing limited Israeli reprisals. Israel is also believed to have carried out several airstrikes on arms shipments it believed to be headed from Syria to Hezbollah militants in neighboring Lebanon.

It was not immediately clear whether Syrian troops or one of the many rebel groups battling the government carried out Sunday's deadly attack in the Golan. But Lerner said it was clear that the attack was intentional. Israel has repeatedly said it holds the Syrian government responsible for any attacks emanating from its territory, regardless of who actually carries them out.

Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel's annexation of the area has never been recognized internationally.

The incident occurred in the area of Tel Hazeka, near the Quneitra crossing. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian troops had shelled nearby targets on the Syrian border earlier in the day.

Israeli police identified the boy as Mohammed Karaka, 14, of the Arab village of Arraba in northern Israel. Local media said he had accompanied his father, the truck driver, to work.

Late Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he spoke to the boy's father and sent his condolences.

"Our enemies don't differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, adults and children," he told an international gathering of Jewish journalists.

In his address, Netanyahu said in conflicts like Syria, where al-Qaida-inspired extremists are battling Iranian-backed Syrian troops, there is no good choice and it is best for Israel to sit back and let its enemies weaken each other.

"This is a fault line between civilization and savagery," he said.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly expressed support Sunday for Ukraine's declaration of a cease-fire in its battle against pro-Russian separatists and called on both sides to negotiate a compromise.

Putin said such a compromise must guarantee the rights of the Russian-speaking residents of eastern Ukraine, who must feel like they are "an integral part" of their own country. Putin's statement appeared to signal that he sees their future in Ukraine.

Separatists in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions have declared independence and asked to join Russia. Moscow has rebuffed their appeals, but is seen by Ukraine and the West as actively supporting the insurgency. Putin's conciliatory words came as Russia began large-scale military exercises and after NATO accused Russia of moving troops back toward the Ukrainian border.

Putin appears determined to keep up the pressure to force the Kiev government to give the eastern industrial regions more powers and to prevent Ukraine from moving too close to the European Union or NATO. But he also wants to avoid more punishing sanctions from the U.S. and particularly from the European Union, whose leaders will meet Friday in Brussels, and therefore needs to be seen as cooperating with efforts to de-escalate the conflict.

The Kremlin initially dismissed the peace plan that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko laid out on Friday. But in a statement issued late Saturday, Putin said he welcomed the cease-fire and Poroshenko's "intention to take other concrete steps to reach a peaceful settlement."

As part of his plan, Poroshenko suggested a decentralization of power to give the regions more political authority. He also proposed new local and parliamentary elections, and measures to protect the language rights of Russian speakers in the east.

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Russian Vladimir Putin, second right, takes part in a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unkn …

Putin was more specific on Sunday, when he spoke publicly following ceremonies commemorating the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

"That President Poroshenko announced a truce is without a doubt an important part of a final settlement, without which no agreement can be reached, and there is no doubt that Russia will support this intention, but in the end the most important thing is a political process," Putin said.

Putin discussed the cease-fire on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, Merkel's office and the Kremlin said.

"After the Russian government too referred to the cease-fire in positive terms, the interlocutors emphasized the need for all sides to abide by it now and for a political dialogue to be put in motion," Merkel's office said in a statement. "Another topic of the conversation was the issue of securing the Ukrainian-Russian border."

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden welcomed Ukraine's unilateral cease-fire declaration in a telephone conversation with Poroshenko, but expressed concern that separatist leaders have refused to reciprocate, Biden's office said in a statement.

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A damaged window is seen after explosion at regional administration in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, Sun …

In Kiev, Poroshenko also addressed his nation on the day on which Ukrainians and Russians mourn the millions who died during World War II. He called for peace, but urged his compatriots to stand strong and united.

"It was so during the violent struggle against the Nazis and it should be the same now," Poroshenko said. "Facing a real threat, we must unite even more and secure our historical choice, defend our right to live freely on our land."

Also Sunday, a few hundred pro-Ukrainian activists marched outside Kiev Pechersk Lavra, a revered Orthodox monastery, which was guarded by riot police, some on horseback. The activists had come to prevent pro-Russian supporters from holding their own march at the monastery, which is under the jurisdiction of the Moscow patriarchy.

Putin has appealed to both sides to halt all military operations and sit down at the negotiating table.

It remained unclear whether the pro-Russia separatists would comply and how much pressure Russia would put on them to cease fire.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev attend a Victory Day para …

Putin said Sunday that fighting was continuing, including what he said was artillery fire from the Ukrainian side. Poroshenko has said his troops reserve the right to fire back if separatists attack them or civilians.

Poroshenko, in turn, told Biden that "Russian-backed separatists continued to attack Ukrainian forces, including with the use of artillery, following the cease-fire declaration," Biden's office said.

Biden reiterated that the U.S. was working with its G-7 partners to prepare further economic sanctions against Russia if Moscow failed to take actions "to stop the flow of arms and militants across the border and use its influence to publicly call on the separatists to lay down their arms."

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalated sharply in February when protests in favor of closer Ukrainian ties with the European Union drove pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych from power. Russia denounced the events as a coup and annexed Ukraine's mostly Russian-speaking Crimea region. Rebellion in the eastern regions broke out shortly afterward, with Ukraine accusing Russia of supporting it. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands have fled their homes.

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Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Iraq at risk again: How did we get here so fast?

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's crumbling so quickly: Just 2½ years after American troops came home, Iraq is back in crisis.

And chaos in Iraq, a diverse nation that stands as a buffer zone between the mostly Sunni Mideast and mostly Shiite Iran, is troubling around the world.

There were plenty of warnings, of course.

A look at how we got here:

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WHEN DID THE TROUBLE START?

The answer depends: How far back do you want to go?

A.D. 632: The centuries-old split between the Shia and Sunni denominations dates to the death of the Prophet Muhammad and a dispute over who should succeed him as leader of the Muslims. Sunnis are the largest branch of Islam. But Shiites outnumber them in Iraq and make up the overwhelming majority of neighboring Iran.

1916: The uneasy borders dividing the Middle East were set during World War I, when the French and English divvied up the lands of the defeated Ottoman Empire with little regard for religious or ethnic differences. Through wars and upheaval, the national borders they drew have pretty much held, largely by the force of autocratic rulers.

2003: A U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, and mayhem broke out. Saddam had ruthlessly held the nation together for more than two decades, favoring his fellow Sunnis while wiping out multitudes of Shiites and Kurds. Americans, flush with the fervor that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, hoped to replace him with a friendly democracy. They met waves of bombings, massacres and kidnappings in sectarian fighting that peaked in 2006 and 2007, when additional U.S. troops began arriving and helped to temporarily tamp down the violence.

2011: A return to factional warfare has been feared ever since U.S. troops pulled out after nearly nine years in Iraq. Americans urged Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to craft a government that would share power between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds and heal the national wounds. It didn't work out. Sunnis complain they are excluded, imprisoned and abused by al-Maliki's Shiite-dominated government. Kurds have focused on building up their oil-rich autonomous enclave in northern Iraq.

2013: The situation in Iraq began deteriorating rapidly. Sunni protesters took to the streets, al-Qaida-inspired militants stepped up their attacks, and fighting from Syria's civil war spilled over the border into Iraq.

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WHO ARE THOSE GUYS?

The alarming dispatches from Iraq often feature a jumble of letters new to many American ears: ISIL, or sometimes ISIS. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a Sunni insurgent group.

Its previous name is more familiar: al-Qaida in Iraq.

The group emerged during the Iraq War as a major player in the Shiite vs. Sunni violence that threatened to rip Iraq apart along sectarian lines. The U.S. State Department classified al-Qaida in Iraq as a terrorist organization in 2004.

The Sunni group famously blew up one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, the golden domed al-Askari mosque in Samarra, in 2006. It uses beheadings and videotaped executions to enhance its reputation for brutality.

Leaders of the core of al-Qaida objected to the group's attacks on fellow Muslims in Iraq, worrying that would hurt the larger cause of jihad against the West.

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In this Sunday, June 15, 2014 photo, an Iraqi works on a temporary mosaic of Christian symbols made …

The Islamic State aggressively moved into Syria in 2013, two years into that country's uprising. The group changed its name, clashed with other rebel factions and eventually had a falling out with the main al-Qaida organization, which formally disavowed it in February.

Their name is sometimes translated from Arabic as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. That understates the relatively small group's outsized ambition.

It wants to create an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law in Iraq and in "the Levant," a region stretching from southern Turkey into Egypt, encompassing not only Syria but also Jordan and Israel. The group's extremist brand of Shariah orders women to stay inside their homes, bans music and punishes thieves by cutting off their hands.

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WHAT'S THE SYRIAN CONNECTION?

As the U.S. was winding down operations in Iraq in 2011, the Arab Spring protests were underway.

Uprisings forced out the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. In Syria, President Bashar Assad's deadly crackdown on demonstrators sparked a civil war, with no end in sight.

It's a rebellion that reverberates strongly among Iraq's Sunnis: The Syrian rebels are mostly Sunnis, fighting a repressive government dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The bloodshed in Syria revitalized the flagging Islamic State.

The extremist group joined the fight and began gathering new recruits from among the foreigners pouring in to battle Assad. It set up operations in Syria that serve as a base for the Iraq campaign. It took over a swath of Iraqi and Syrian borderland and turned it into a seedbed for the Islamic State's vision of a caliphate under strict Islamic law.

American intelligence officials worry that this fiefdom could be used to train jihadis with Western passports to attack the United States.

The United States also wants Assad out of Syria. But it is limiting its assistance to Syrian rebels to avoid helping extremists such as the Islamic State.

The group's land grabs, brutality and extreme religious rules alienated even some of its would-be allies on the ground. Heavy fighting for the past six months between the Islamic State and other insurgents has weakened the Syrian opposition.

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IS BAGHDAD ON THE BRINK?

The Islamic State's bold and bloody sweep through northern and western Iraq this year belies its relatively small numbers — probably fewer than 10,000 fighters, according to U.S. intelligence estimates.

How could a force that size take Fallujah, site of the biggest battle of the Iraq War, and capture Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq?

—For one thing, it's the home team. Many residents of the Sunni heartland prefer the insurgents to al-Maliki's government. That might change later if the group begins to enforce its Taliban-style version of Islamic law.

—The Iraqi army is awash in corruption, desertion and battered morale. Many Sunni and Kurd soldiers and police feel little loyalty to Baghdad; they balk at fighting and killing their own people. When Islamic State fighters moved into Mosul, a security force of some 75,000 troops and police collapsed and scattered.

—The Islamic State also appears to be getting help from Sunni tribes and elements of Saddam's old Baath Party. The insurgents rolled into Saddam's hometown of Tikrit without opposition.

Despite its threats, the Islamic State probably isn't big enough to overrun Baghdad, the Shiite-heavy capital city of 7 million people, much less conquer all of Iraq.

The real fear is that their campaign will spark a wider Sunni uprising, incite retaliation by Shiite militias and start a full-out religious war that could spread across the Middle East.

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WHERE DOES IRAN COME IN?

Maybe on the American side, for a change.

The list of complaints between the United States and Iran is long and grievous: The U.S. accused Iran of aiding Shiite militias that killed American troops during the Iraq War. It says Iran sponsors global terrorists and poses a potential nuclear threat to Israel.

The two nations stand opposed on Syria, where Iran is propping up Assad.

Yet when it comes to Iraq, their interests align, at least in the short term. Both Iran and the U.S. want stability in Iraq; they share a common foe in the Islamic State.

There's also grim history behind Iran's alliance with a Shiite-controlled Iraq.

When Saddam and Sunnis ran Iraq, they invaded Iran and started an eight-year war that cost a million lives. Back then, the United States supported Saddam over Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who held Americans hostage and called the U.S. the "Great Satan."

Today, mostly Shiite Iran badly wants an ally instead of an enemy across the border in Iraq.

President Barack Obama's administration has made overtures to Iran about possibly working together on the problem. Obama says that means teaming up to persuade Iraq's government to make amends with the Sunnis and Kurds — not military cooperation.

But Iran already is helping Iraq strengthen its military and Shiite militias to battle the militant Sunni onslaught.

Across the Middle East, that could look like another omen of a spreading religious war.

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Associated Press writers Lee Keath in Cairo, Ryan Lucas in Beirut, Adam Schreck in Dubai, and Lara Jakes in Washington contributed to this report.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia's top court on Monday upheld a government ban forbidding non-Muslims from using "Allah" to refer to God, rejecting an appeal by the Roman Catholic Church that argued that the law failed to consider the rights of minorities in the largely Muslim nation.

Although the Malaysian constitution guarantees freedom of religion, the 4-3 decision by the Federal Court is expected to reinforce complaints from Christians, Buddhist and Hindu minorities that non-Muslims do not always get fair treatment from the government and courts — accusations the government denies.

"We are disappointed. The four judges who denied us the right to appeal did not touch on fundamental basic rights of minorities?," said Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of The Herald, the newspaper at the center of the controversy.

"It will confine the freedom of worship," he added. "We are a minority in this country, and when our rights are curtailed, people feel it."

Allah is the Arabic word for God and commonly used in the Malay language to refer to God. The court had ruled that Catholic Church had no grounds to appeal a lower court decision last year that kept it from using "Allah" in its Malay-language weekly publication.

The government says Allah should be reserved exclusively for Muslims — who make up nearly two-thirds of the country's 29 million people — because if other religions use it that could confuse Muslims and lead them to convert.

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Muslim women sit in front of a banner reading "Allah" during a protest outside the Court of Appeal i …

Christian representatives deny this, arguing that the ban is unreasonable because Christians who speak the Malay language have long used the word in their Bibles, prayers and songs before authorities sought to enforce the curb in recent years. Christians make up about 9 percent of the population, with many living in the eastern states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo Island.

The ban appears to apply mostly to published materials, not spoken words, and newspapers using the term would lose their license. Imported Malay-language Bibles containing the term Allah, typically from Indonesia, already have been blocked. Beyond that, it wasn't clear what the punishment would be for violating the ban.

Human Rights Watch said it reflected dwindling religious tolerance in Malaysia.

"This is a sad state of affairs that shows how far and fast religious tolerance is falling in Malaysia. The Malaysian government should be working to promote freedom of religion rather politically exploiting religious wedge issues like long-standing Christian use of the word 'Allah' in Malay texts," said Phil Robertson, a spokesman for the organization.

Over the years, the controversy has provoked violence in Malaysia.

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A Muslim woman holds a banner reading "Allah" during a protest outside the Court of Appeal in Putraj …

Anger over a lower court ruling against the government ban in 2009 led to a string of arson attacks and vandalism at churches and other places of worship. A 2013 judgment by the Court of Appeals reversed that decision, which the Catholic church appealed to the Federal Court.

An umbrella group of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches in Malaysia said Christians will continue to use the word Allah in their Bibles and worship, saying the court ruling was only confined to the Catholic newspaper.

"We maintain that the Christian community continues to have the right to use the word 'Allah' in our Bibles, church services and Christian gatherings," Rev. Eu Hong Seng, chairman of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, said in a statement.

Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters he welcomed the ruling, but said he hoped no parties would politicize the matter and use it to divide races.

"This is an emotional issue that can affect the country's (racial) harmony. We must handle it with wisdom," he said. "The court has made a decision, so let's accept it."

Some experts believe the Allah issue is an attempt by Prime Minister Najib Razak's ruling Malay party to strengthen its conservative Muslim voter base. Religion has become an easy tool because government policies have made Islam and Malay identity inseparable.

"This is a situation that is peculiar to Malaysia. It is tied to politics and the identity of Malays. It is a bending of the interpretation of Islam to suit Malay politics and Malay interests," said Ibrahim Suffian, who heads the Merdeka Center opinion research company.

The issue hasn't surfaced in other majority Muslim nations with sizeable Christian minorities.

In Egypt, where about 10 percent of the population is Christian, both Muslims and Christians refer to God as "Allah," and this hasn't generated any controversy or antagonism. Christians often refer to God as "al-Rab" in their liturgy, but use "Allah" more frequently in their daily life.

The same is true for Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation. Both groups use "Allah" — although Christians pronounce it "Al-lah" and Muslims say "Al-loh," so you can tell which religion the speaker is — but this hasn't caused friction.

"My question is, if in other countries, 'Allah' as a term for God is not made exclusive, I am surprised how come the use of the term can be limited by any religion elsewhere in the world," said Fr. Francis Lucas, president of the Catholic Media Network Corp., the broadcast arm of the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

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Associated Press Writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Jim Gomez in Manila, Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Amir Bibawy in New York and Malcolm Foster in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Four judges in Kuala Lumpur uphold a ban forbidding non-Muslims from using "Allah" to refer to God.
Catholic Church's argument