Wednesday 11 March 2009

On the Dangerous Topics of God, Allah and Oh Tuhan

This is going to be a pretty controversial topic. For those who care, anyway. As you may or may not know, there is an issue with Christian newspapers using the name Allah to refer to God. From Reuters: Malaysia Christians battle with Muslims over Allah:

Those concerns led to the ban on the Catholic Herald newspaper's use of "Allah" to denote God. The Herald is now suing the government to overturn the ruling, made after it appeared the paper would be allowed to use "Allah" provided it stamped "For Christians" on the front page of the paper.

To some, it may seem like a "What's the big deal?" thing, while to others it's heresy. Let's try to shed a bit of light on it.

Language is what the issue boils down to, and let's not pretend that language doesn't matter. In England, 'pakis' is considered a derogatory term referring to Pakistanis, while in Malaysia, it's a fern. In America, 'bastard' is a derogatory term, while in France it's not unusual to find people named Bastard.

In the same vein, in Malaysia, Allah isn't a word referring to God in general, but a name and a proper noun referring specifically to the Muslim God. In Malay, the word Tuhan is used to refer to God in general, be He Christian, Muslim, Hindu or otherwise. Therefore, for a newspaper - a publication that should have a good command of language and custom - to use the world Allah to refer to the Christian God is a major faux-pas (fox pass). It's sort of like referring to Vishnu as Jesus Christ Almighty.

Like it or not, there really is a pretty big difference between referring to Jesus as Allah, or the other way. Actually, if a mosque took to referring to Allah as Jesus (it won't, but let's hypothesise here), they'd be called heretics by Muslims and deviant Muslim terrorists by everyone else.

To put it in perspective, why does this newspaper have to use the term 'Allah', anyway, knowing full well that it is a proper noun? What's wrong with Tuhan? What's wrong with God as a generality? You have to wonder what the point is. If it's to fight for the freedom of speech, there are other (less stupid) ways to do so, and I will back you on it.

No comments:

Post a Comment

State your purpose.