Malaysian police Wednesday announced the arrest of eight men who allegedly attacked a Christian church with a firebomb - the first suspects in a spate of unprecedented assaults on churches that raised religious tensions in this Muslim-majority nation.

The attacks on 11 churches and a Sikh temple followed a Dec. 31 court verdict that allowed non-Muslims to use the word "Allah" to refer to God. The verdict upset many ethnic Malay Muslims who insist that letting Christians use the word could confuse some Muslims and entice them to convert.

The dispute has strained ties between Malays, who make up nearly two-thirds of Malaysia's 28 million people, and religious minorities, which often complain about what they believe is institutionalized religious discrimination.

Authorities detained eight suspects since Tuesday in connection to the first reported attack at Kuala Lumpur's Metro Tabernacle Church, which had its office gutted by fire on Jan. 7, said Bakri Zinin, the federal police chief of criminal investigations.

"We believe that we solved this case," Bakri told a news conference.

The suspects were all Malays from 21 to 26 years old, according to a police statement. Police tracked them down after one of them sought treatment at a hospital for burn injuries, Bakri said.

The disquiet centers on a court ruling in which the Herald, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Church in Malaysia, argued it has the right to use the word "Allah" in its Malay-language edition because the word predates Islam and is commonly used by Christians in other predominantly Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Indonesia.