guardian: “Allah” means God, unless you are a non-Muslim Malaysian, in which case you have to find another word. After a recent court ruling in the country, Allah can now be used only to refer to the Muslim God, and non-Muslims (mainly the Malaysian Christian Catholic community and press) have been banned from using it. It is a decision that has inflamed opinion among minority religions and disheartened Muslims. Apart from all the practical implications of this (re-printing Bibles and so on), there are other intangible but more heartfelt grievances. At first glance it looks like a petty scuffle over semantics, but the roots of the dispute go deep into the issue of national identity.
The ruling was flimsily justified by the “risk” of conversion. Announcing the change, the judge said: “It is my judgment that the possible and most probable threat to Islam, in the context of this country, is the propagation of other religions to the followers of Islam.” But the ban is less about religion than about putting non-Malay minorities in their place, subordinating their status to that of Muslims, the majority population.
The issue is made more complex by the fact that “Allah” is an Arabic loan-word and, when imported into other languages, can come to be thought of as a proper noun. On my first day at a British school, a teacher going around the class and asked us what our respective non-Christian gods were called. When I floundered, she exasperatedly told me that my god was called Allah, and I couldn’t quite explain to her why that felt wrong. To me, Allah just meant “God” in Arabic. It wasn’t a name
Categories: Asia
First of all, the divide of nation into Muslim and nonMuslm will be a curse. They will have to mark the faith of every man and woman in Malaya.
While they will keep the title of Muslim for theselves while they will be Deobandi, Wahhabi and brelvi (and many type Muslims). Why not when the marking takes places, the so called Muslims should also be differentiated by their known group, i.e. the grouup of Islam where they belong. It shouuld be marked in their ID Cards.
Further, some Christian should go to court and request for a ban on the Muslims using the word “God” in any book or speech. They should bring a plea at the court that it hurts their feeling whenever Muslims use the word “God”. Any Muslim using the word “God” should be punished severely.