Allah Means God, Unless You’re a Christian in Malaysia

SOURCE: Time

Muslim demonstrators Muslim demonstrators
Allah can no longer be used by a Christian newspaper in Malaysia to refer to God after a landmark court ruling on Monday, reversing a decision made four years previously that maintained the term transcended different faiths.

“It is my judgment that the most possible and probable threat to Islam, in the context of this country, is the propagation of other religions to the followers of Islam,” said chief judge Mohamed Apandi Ali, announcing the change.

The panel of three judges was unanimous in their decision that the use of Allah by the Roman Catholic Herald newspaper constituted a threat to the sanctity of Islam, as defined in the federal constitution. The Herald editor the Rev. Lawrence Andrew said he was “disappointed and dismayed,” vowing to appeal.

The issue is contentious. The previous 2009 ruling was followed by a spate of attacks on churches, and critics fear the issue is once again being used to stoke religious tensions in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian nation. “Narrow-minded and prejudiced people are creating an atmosphere of hatred,” Mujahid Yusof Rawa, an MP for Malaysia’s opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, tells TIME.

According to the Rev. Eu Hong Seng, chairman of the Christian Federation of Malaysia, “The Bahasa Malaysia–speaking Christians have been using the word Allah before and after the independence of Malaya and the formation of Malaysia.”

Plenty of academic evidence suggests that Allah has also been used by Christians and Jews in Arabia for generations. “And what about the 10 [million] to 12 million Arab Christians today? They have been calling God ‘Allah’ in their Bibles, hymns, poems, writings, and worship for over 19 centuries,” says Fouad Accad in his book Building Bridges: Christianity and Islam, which examines commonality between the different faiths.

Allah was common parlance even before the birth of Islam in the sixth century. “Arabs used the word ‘Allah’ for the supreme being before the time of Muhammad,” writes Kenneth J. Thomas, a United Bible Societies translation consultant based in New York. “Inscriptions with ‘Allah’ have been discovered in Northern and Southern Arabia from as early as the fifth century B.C.”

With Christians in the neighboring Indonesia still allowed to use the term, many ponder what is behind the Malaysian U-turn. Mujahid believes this latest ruling is part of a “dynamic” of Malay right-wing appeasement after Prime Minister Najib Razak was returned to power with a slim majority.

“Malaysia is not prepared yet for such mature interfaith relationships, since the word Allah is still seen as very sensitive to Muslims,” he laments. “But I don’t think Muslims are that weak that they are going to convert to Christianity by hearing the word Allah said by a Christian.”

Ethnicity has been a key facet of Malaysian politics since colonial times, and increasingly so after 1971, when affirmative action for the bumiputra, or “sons of the soil” as the Malay and smaller indigenous minorities call themselves, was introduced in the wake of bloody race riots.

Ethnic Malays make up around two-thirds of Malaysia’s 28 million people. Chinese and Indians control much of the wealth and make up around 22% and 7% of the population respectively. About 9% of Malaysians are Christian.

18 октября 2013 г.

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G.E. Hoostal 7 ноября 2013, 10:00
Mr. Morgan, While their Allah is not ours, ‘Allah’ is merely Arabic for ‘God’. So if this were taking place in an English-speaking country, what would be going on would be Christians would be prohibited from calling the Trinity or any person of the Trinity God. As indicated in the article, all monotheistic Arabs have always called whomever they worship by the title of Allah. This government though is trying to put a monopoly on the title.
Blake Morgan22 октября 2013, 09:00
God, Allah and Lord are titles, not names. The God of the universe is referred to as God and Father. American Christians differentiate our God, who is the creator of the universe and man, by calling Him Jehovah. If all Christians truly believe that Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God, why refer to Him as Allah? Allah is what the Muslims call their god and they take exception to Jews and Christians calling our God Allah. God chose to not be called by a name and until the 20th century there existed no problem simply referring to the creator as God. But man feels some sort of desire to call God by a name. Moses only knew God as, "I AM", meaning I AM what I will myself to be. Allah is not the Christian God and the Muslims resent Christians calling our God Allah so why create a problem that needn't exist? There is already enough problems between Christians and Muslims without creating more. The creator of the universe and man is simply God.
Laurence19 октября 2013, 01:00
'Creator,' and 'Sovereign Lord of Heavens Armies,' and the 'I Am' are all perfectly reasonable, and accurate. G...d is both concrete and abstract, near and far, the alpha and the Omega, how pretentious to ascribe a specific 'name.' Though the Son has a name, for the sake of the sinners who could not, or chose not, to follow the Law.
Храм Новомученников Церкви Русской. Внести лепту