I gather from the ongoing debate over at malaysiakini about the use of the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God, that there's an underlying current in vortex flow, eddying here, there and then rushing forward at a furious pace.
I did ask two questions:
(1) Why are some Christians so insistent on referring to God as ‘Allah’?
(2) Why have some Muslims been equally insistent that non-Mulsims may not?
Maybe the two questions could be answered with one possible and common scenario, namely that party A wants to use ‘Allah’ as a means to subtly proselytise Muslims, while party B are damn worried that’s precisely what could happen.
It would be a case of Allah (swt) being 'invited into' a Muslim's house, and before the host could serve tea, he/she turns around and suddenly finds Jehovah sitting comfortably on the living room sofa reading the Christian Digest - Amen (or should it be Amin?)
That’s why some Muslims have stated that by referring to God with the word ‘Allah’, there may be confusion among the Malaysian Ummah, while the other party (and the more confident Muslims) scoffed at the insulting suggestion that Muslims could be confused on who their ‘Allah’ (or should be it ‘God’?) is.
But is their 'fear' legitimate?
From that debate (and worries), some ludicrous suggestions such as using one or two L’s in the word ‘Allah’ (versus ‘Alah’) to separate the Muslim divinity and non-Muslim one were offered.
Amidst this Islam-Christianity jostling, Buddhism, though having no God and indeed offering no submission of faith to any such entity, suffered collateral damage. Maybe there was a fear by malaysiakini writer, myopic (ironically) Teropong Negara, that Malaysian Buddhists would rush out to talk about Gautama ‘Allah’ (or should it be ‘Alah’) of the Sakya clan and his 4 Noble Truths and Eightfold Path – see my BolehTalk posting Walking on waters of ignorance.
But to be fair to everyone, especially to innocents like the Buddhists ;-) (this one’s for my mum) I need to ask those non-Muslims who have been insisting on using ‘Allah’ to refer to God, why? Why not use ‘Tuhan’? Or, Jehovah?
Please explain!
Why are you wasting time debating on a non-existence entity.
ReplyDeleteMy 2 sen... since time immemorial Allah has been used in the middle east or near west pre Islam. Christians there have been using that name pre Islam. When Christinaity came to our part of the world (not sure pre or post Islam's arrival) scriptures have been translated using Allah for God in line with the middle east.
ReplyDeleteIt will seem ridiculous for Muslim to claim sole ownership (if God can be owned) of the name Allah and then ban others from using that name. When the Indonesian Bible (which is not a problem in Indonesia despite it being the largest Muslim country in the world) is used by the Malay speaking Christians here, the authority tried to ban its usage because Allah is the name of God in that translation!
It is not a matter of not using other names. It is a principle of misplaced ownership.
Y1
In a multi-religous society like Malaysia, we always have to make some compromises to avoid inter-religous friction. Sounds weak, but that's reality.
ReplyDelete"Allah" or "Alah", whichever, is regarded as the name Muslims use for the God of Islam (of course everybody considers THEIR God as the One and Only True deity, but lets leave those arguments aside first). Its not a generic name, so non-Muslims should not use the name to refer to God in their own religion. The generic word is Tuhan. The Indonesian Bible tranlation's use of Allah for God in the Christian context is really controversial, but I guess Indonesia is nowadays more progressive and tolerant than Malaysia on matters of religion.
next, can Christians use Amen (Amin for Muslim) or not ar? But I guess it won't be that controversial compared to what is God's name... but heck, it can confuse everyone especially after the prayer! :P
ReplyDeleteThe Ibans use Allah in their Bup Kudus. Did anybody mention this yet?
ReplyDelete<Wikipedia's Allh
ReplyDelete"Most Arabic-speaking Christian and Jewish Communities (including the Yemenite Jews, several Mizraḥi communities and some Sephardim) use "Allāh" as the proper noun for "God". Eastern Christians living in Muslim countries such as Turkey's Armenians use the word 'Allah' as the proper noun for "God". The name's origin can be traced back to the earliest Semitic writings in which the word for god was Il or El, the latter being an Old Testament synonym for Yahweh. Allah is the standard Arabic word for “God” and is used by Arab Christians as well."
Arabic-speaking non-muslim can not use it?
mich, you quoted Wikipedia, a source of information that is not credible nor accountable as it is written by anonymous cowards.
ReplyDeleteall orthodox (sunni) muslims worship in arabic language, while all orthodox (talmudic) jews worship in hebrew language, just as all sikhs regardless of race worship in punjabi.
can a muslim still be a muslim and worship in english? the answer is clearly no. ditto for jewish and sikh people.
arabic-speaking jewish communities do not use "allah" as the "proper noun" for god but Adonay and the arabic dialect they speak is called judeo-arabic (like manglish) a mix of hebrew and arabic words. also, all arabic-speaking jewish i know follow orthodox judaism and they worship in hebrew language, the language of abraham and god. that's monotheism to pray in one language but to use many languages is polytheism.
"kittykat46 said...
ReplyDeleteIn a multi-religous society like Malaysia, we always have to make some compromises to avoid inter-religous friction. Sounds weak, but that's reality.
"Allah" or "Alah", whichever, is regarded as the name Muslims use for the God of Islam (of course everybody considers THEIR God as the One and Only True deity, but lets leave those arguments aside first). Its not a generic name, so non-Muslims should not use the name to refer to God in their own religion"
Come on everyone grow up, it is a wrod and just a word, it has meaning ture, but it is still only a word. As for living ina multi-religious area, well then the same can be said the other way, we live in a multi-religious area thus people shoudl stop creating arguments when one group uses a word of their group, be glad people are talkign to one another at least. look there are far more many countries in the world that a far far more multi-religious and cultural then Malaysia can ever dream of being and there are not thee problems. No one one on this planet can claim right to a word alone.