The 100th name of God!

I am happy to be able to say I told you so.

In an earlier post Road to hell I had lightly tapped the wrist of Steve Oh for his letter proclaiming Nurul Izzah's statement on 'freedom of religion' as a 'watershed' idea for nation, but which I had suspected was driven by his personal agenda.

better Nurul's photo than Steve Oh's wakakaka

Anyone's personal agenda is okay by me, provided it doesn't adversely affect the public or yours truly, because everyone has an agenda of his/her own.

But I chided Steve Oh because he exploited Nurul Izzah's rather daring or impetuous statement, from which she has since belakang pusing (turned around 180 degrees), to present his rather bizarre views.

I'm being euphemistically polite here in describing his views as 'bizarre'.

He went beyond (in fact, never was in) context with regards to Nurul's original statement, a 'bizarre' philosophical excursion that had probably worsened Nurul's predicament.

S. Thayaparan, one of the more erudite Malaysiakini columnists wrote in his article Welcome to Malaysia's religious jungle (lovely appropriate title, but Thayaparan's write-up has not been very complimentary of Chinese or, we hope, just BN's Chinese cronies), that:

Steve Oh's Malaysiakini letter, (which for some reason warranted a visit by the state's security apparatus) in support of Nurul, is loaded with the usual Christian hypocrisy that the calcification of the Malay mind happened in an Umno vacuum.

... which confirms my point about Steve Oh in my earlier post Road to hell, wakakaka.

Christian hypocrisy

However, I have some doubts about one of Thayaparan's assertions, namely the paragraph which states:

The whole Christian issue is merely the natural consequence of growing section of the mainly Chinese community falling under the sway of a worldwide capitalist/Judeo-Christian revivalist movement, which is leading the way in demanding equal religious rights (which is their constitutional right) after years of Umno corrupting every institution that was supposed to safeguard those rights.

Now I am not saying he is wrong - I really don't know - but from my reading and observations, I opine that his opening sentence in the above paragraph should rather be: '... The whole Christian issue is merely the natural consequence of growing section of the mainly Indian community (including Anglo-Indian) falling under the sway of a worldwide capitalist/Judeo-Christian revivalist movement ...'.

I had sparred with a few (Malaysian) Indian Christians over Israel, where I found them unusually loyal to the Jewish State, making frequent references to the Bible as so-called 'proof' that God has given the land to the Israelis.

Then, I recall our dear Father Lawrence Andrew, the bloke who insisted rather stubbornly on using the 'Allah' word.

I offended my blogging mateys, staunch Catholics Lucia Lai and D'Cruz, as well as other Catholics, when I published not only three posts on the use of the 'Allah' word, but also wrote a letter to Malaysiakini expressing my concerns with the Catholic Church (in the person of Father Lawrence Andrew) being obdurately insistent in using the word 'Allah' (instead of 'Tuhan' or other words with strong Judeo-Christian pedigree) in the Malay edition of the Catholic Herald.

Okay, I have to admit I was a wee annoyed with Father Lawrence's intransigent obduracy when I wrote in my post:

It seems that Father Andrew is dead set on using ‘Allah’ to refer to the Christian God, regardless of the superior pedigree (in the Christian context) of God’s other names as revealed in the Bible.

... and I followed that up by asking Father Lawrence (in my post too):

“What is really your goal in obdurately pursuing the use of the word ‘Allah’ to refer to the Christian God in a Malay-language newsletter and Bible when so many other names of your Christian God, with even better biblical pedigree, remain available?”

My three posts on the 'Allah' word issue were:


(a) Allah, Elohim or Yahweh?

The above post was originally sent to the Centre for Policy Initiatives (CPI) for acceptance as a CPI article (I had previously written a few pieces for it) but alas, was rejected by its director Dr Lim Teck Ghee who did not provide any reason for his rejection - could it be that he was stunned by a non-Muslim Chinese speaking out against the Catholic Church, and by default, in favour of the Muslims.

Well, it was his prerogative. So I then sent it to Malaysiakini as a letter, where it was published, wakakaka.

(b) Catholic Herald and the 3rd Pandora Box in which I brought out (then) Malaysiakini columnist Helen Ang's sarcasm on the Catholic Church insistence in using the 'Allah' word, as follows:

In today’s Malaysiakini column, sweetie Helen Ang wrote in her new article of Malaysia being not quite secular.

She said: Last week, PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang called on the government to amend the first precept of the Rukunegara to 'Belief in Allah'. All those who insisted on the Catholic Herald's 'right' to 'Allah' should now warmly welcome Hadi's proposal made in Parliament when debating the motion of thanks on the Agong's speech. After all, these people had so enthusiastically embraced the idea that "your Allah is my Allah too".

My post continued:

Even Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, states the first of its Pancasila (national ideology) as 'KeTuhanan Yang Maha Esa', thus without mentioning 'Allah'. Our Rukunnegara was just a modified copy of the Pancasila.

Now, Pak Haji Hadi Awang wants to better Indonesia in this department. He has effectively raised the ante for UMNO to follow.

But sweetie Helen warned that Pak Haji Hadi Awang’s 'Allah' is not quite the ‘Allah’ that Father Lawrence Andrew and the Catholic Church have in mind. Read her article to find out more.

So be prepared for onward escalation of this issue if/when UMNO succumbs to the temptation to outflank PAS on this one, in similar fashion to what Dr Mahathir once thought was an excellent idea.

And we can only have Father Lawrence and the Catholic Herald mob to thank for the probable opening of the 3rd Pandora Box, which will be both an extension and an advance model of the 1st Pandora Box.

This was 2.5 years ago, in April 2010, when we were reminded of Pak Haji Hadi Awang's mindset.

'Reminded'? ... because even earlier in 2004, just leading up to GE-11, PAS was riding on the hem of Dr Wan Azizan's popularity, to an extent they hijacked her/KeADILan campaign as PAS' own.

Mistakenly believing the support for Dr WAn was for them, they went feral as they have done today, bearing their fangs (or rather, their scorpion sting in the tail). Unfortunately for them, they moved too early and frightened the hell out of the non-Muslims who voted heavily for AAB.

PAS has this weakness to revert to its true intolerant nature when they think they're riding high - 'tis the nature of the (scorpion) beast.

(c) Some biblical names of God

I thought I'd be a good Samaritan and help Father Lawrence Andrew select an alternative name with better Judeo-Christian pedigree for his Catholic God instead of 'Allah'. But I suspected by then I was so unpopular with the Catholics that they must have prayed for me to be barred from entering the Pearly Gates when my Time arrives, wakakaka.

At some stage during the brouhaha about copyrights issue on Allah's name, the silliness of the squabble deteriorated to one Muslim suggesting that if the Christians insisted on using the word 'Allah' instead of just Tuhan or any other Biblical names like Elohim, Adonai-Jehovah, El-Olam, Elyon, Yahweh, etc, then they still could, provided they spelt the word as 'Alah' with only one 'L' letter, wakakaka.

I was so tickled by the quarrel over God's name that I cheekily penned a poem Magic of the 100th name of God on the silly controversy and sent it to Malaysiakini. It was published and I am now reproducing same below:

Once

I had a hundred names

with only 99 known.

Trust Isis and her wiles,

yes, a woman

and a lovely one too,

to pry the 100th out of me.

Devious!

Isis

Amazed!

I now have a new one but

minus an 'L' as if that

would mean someone else,

like Odin, Manitou, Zeus,

rather than ole me, you

know who, don't you?

Moi

Isis

Hey

I call out to them, they

in the red and blue corners.

The names' the same, it's all mine

of course, whose did you think?

Butt out, sneered one;

Yes, the other concurred;

Scat!

Isis

Huh?

But they're all mine, those

names you're fighting over.

So what, did you patent them

like mapped gerome of langsat

and petai for exclusive use?

No? Then, buzz off!

Goodbye

Isis

But

Why fight over my names

when I am the same Bloke

for all of you guys and gals?

Hellooooo, didn't we say

to butt out of our turf wars,

on exclusive use of THE name.

Understand?

Isis

Isis!

Only she knew my 100th name

that bestows the most powerful

magic on those who know.

She was privy to my secret (100th)

name called Compassion, sometimes

known as, would you believe,

Love!

It's a pity we Malaysians, whether Muslims, Christians, Hindus, etc, just can't keep religion out of our politics.