JAN 8 — Allah. If you’re Malaysian, or have been following Malaysian news (mainstream or otherwise) for the past two weeks, you’d have known that the High Court has ruled against making the use of the word “Allah” exclusive only for Muslims, or at the very least you’d have noticed that right now everyone’s giving their two-sen’s on the matter.
I’m definitely not a religious expert, that’s for sure. But I think I’ve read enough to know that it is an undeniable fact that Christianity and Islam more or less sprouted from the same tree. We share prophets, and even the Bible (which version of it though is open for debate, I know) is recognised in Islam as one of the “big four” books, alongside the Torah, the Zabur and our very own Quran. Somewhere along the way these faiths branched out and went their separate ways, that’s true, but still one must never forget that what started it all was that one God.
I’m not here to debate the correctness or validity of this or that religion, or who gets to call their God this or that. I’m just saying that this is not something new, Christians referring to God as Allah. It is not uncommon at all for Christians in Sabah and Sarawak to have their Mass in Bahasa Malaysia, and this has gone on for a long time already, and they’ve been referring to God as Allah for a long time already. In case I still haven’t made myself clear:
1. Christianity is not a new faith in Malaysia.
2. Christians use Bahasa Malaysia too.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading, most people who are against the use of the word “Allah” by Christians have one main crux in their argument — that it can or will confuse people. And that “confusion” can or will lead to the weakening of our faith here (i.e. the Muslim faith — because this is, unfortunately for you, OUR country). The fragile little minds of Muslim children here might easily confuse the Muslim version of Allah and the Christian version of Allah, so we might as well just not let them Christians use the word Allah to avoid that potentially catastrophic confusion from happening. This is after all, OUR country and Allah is OUR word.
I’m not going to debate the whole “OUR country” thing here, because that sort of debate will never end and will involve more than the 1,000-word limit I have for this article. But what really irks me about this whole “confusion” argument is that it insults not just my intelligence, but also the intelligence of all Muslim Malaysians.
It makes the assumption that, after 11 years of learning Agama Islam as a subject in the national school system (not to mention the kind of bigoted tall tales we all hear from friends and family about other faiths), we will all be stupidly moronic enough to not see the difference between the Christian version of God and the Muslim version of God, even if they both refer to their God as Allah. Would you let someone insult you like that?
And not only do they insult our intelligence, they even assume that we, Muslim Malaysians, have such paper-thin faith that we will be easily drawn to the “other side” just because the Christians refer to their God as Allah?
The funniest thing about this whole argument is actually how impractical it is when you apply it to real-life situations.
If I were to apply the reasoning used by people who are against Christians using Allah to refer to their God, then by now EVERYONE in Sabah and Sarawak should already be Christians, because every Muslim kid would have heard endlessly Christians referring to God as Allah, and surely they must at least be confused by now, if not already converted to Christianity.
Is that the case though now? It obviously isn’t, right? Why? Because they’re not that weak, that’s why. And they’re obviously not that stupid either, despite what these so-called “saviours” of our faith might think or say.
Besides, if you actually sit down and think about it, you’re unlikely to encounter the word Allah used by Christians outside of the usual places you might normally find it used in — like churches that use Bahasa Malaysia during mass or in Christian magazines or newspapers. Let’s face it, would the average Muslim Malaysian even go to a church anyway? Would he or she even buy Christian magazines or newspapers? I think not, because why would they?
If they’re not even exposed to these mediums, then what’s all the worry about? If by any chance the fragile little mind of a Muslim child did encounter the word Allah in a Christian newspaper or leaflet, all our years of conditioning to be aware of other faiths’ conspiracies to convert us righteous Muslims would send alarm bells ringing in our heads anyway. It is after all, a Christian publication, which we’re taught to never take seriously anyway. And would the Muslim child even read it in the first place?
Inverting the whole issue, we Muslims use God to refer to Allah as well, but do we see the Christian faith crumbling because of that? Do we see Christian children get confused and convert en masse just because they hear Muslim preachers use the word God or encounter a Muslim publication using the word God to refer to god? Or are we implying that Christian kids are smarter and have stronger faith than Muslim kids? From the looks of it, we sure do.
So ask yourself my dear Muslim brothers and sisters, and ask your friends to ask themselves too, do we let other people openly insult our faith and intelligence like what’s been happening now, or should we have more faith in each other?
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