- Who was ‘Allah’ before Islam?

- Several Dubious Claims about the term ‘Allah’

By all means you are most welcome. Such a beautiful word and most accurate to refer The Almighty God according to ISlam. SubhanAllah .. MasyaAllah the Christians believers in Malaysia and Indonesia particularly(leave out the middle east because Allah is God in their arabic language) do believe in Muslim God Allah s.w.t. and thats why they vehemently stress to be allowed to use Allah in the Malaysian and Indonesian bible. I love u Christians better than the Jews. So thoughtful, i guess the word Tuhan(Melayu) and Gusti(Indonesia)are not linguistically accurate to be referred as God in your bible or i personally think u need to engaged a professional translator to translate the bible to bahasa malaysia and indonesia or u will end up with other new Christians dominants and sects soon.

And i would suggest a new name for the Christians(non arabic descent ) as Christian Hadhary cos they so much love to use Arabic language in their Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesia bible translations. Peace be upon u. And please use Salam when u greet the fellow Muslims so that one day we will share the same masjid for prayers. Bi iznillah.

The more important point is historic accuracy. The word ‘Allah’ was used by the Arab Christians long before Islam arrived and there is no reason why it should be banned in Bahasa Malaysia.

Language borrows words from one another.

Here we should also be concerned about principles and precedents. If we allow the government to dictate what people can or cannot use in religion it contravenes the Constituion in its provision for freedom of religion.

The question then is does the state have the right to dictate to practitioners of religion what they can and can’t believe? I don’t think so insofar as matters of conscience are concerned. Faith matters should be left to each individual religion.

For example the Koran has similar biblical characters that contradict Christian teachings. Jesus is the Son of God and is divine but Islam says he is merely a prophet, and the Koran’s teachings on other biblical characters eg Adam, Abraham, Moses etc are different from the Christian teachings. What will Christians do if suddenly the state says you can’t use those names also in the BM Bible because they confuse muslims? You don’t want to accept a precedent.

Some Christians are wary of the use of ‘Allah’ and have gone on to say that ‘Allah’ is not the Christian God. But what they mean is that the teachings of Islam about Allah and the Christian teaching about Allah are different.

God is the same whatever you call him but what we teach about him makes all the difference for people to understand.

The Catholic Church is to be supported for its stand. ‘Allah’ existed before Islam and while we don’t accept Islam’s teachings about Allah as Christians, it does not give the state the right to ban it. Not on constitutional, historica or moral grounds.

There are more important things for the government to do than embroil itself in a controversy that puts it on the backfoot.

That is why I have always found the “Arabic usage” defence extremely weak. It invites a “So what? this is Malay not Arabic” response. It would make more sense for us to use this as a teaching moment to highlight the difference of usage between the terms “Tuhan” and “Allah” in the Christian context and why it is not interchangeable as well as the fact that “Allah” has been used in the Christian context in the Nusantara as far back as the 16th Century – long before the Malay world could actually be considered as thoroughly Islamised.