2009-11-24

Whose God is Allah?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

Religion can be a tense affair in Malaysia.

Roughly two thirds of the population is Muslim, and religious minorities have repeatedly accused the government of undermining their rights.

The interception by Malaysian authorities of thousands of Bibles bound for Christians in the country has produced the latest flashpoint.

The reason - the Bibles use the word Allah to describe God, and that's been banned by the government.

It says the risk of causing upset to Muslims is too great.

Muslim groups claim that Christian use of a word so closely associated with Islam in Bibles and children's books could be aimed at winning converts.

Religion is closely associated with ethnicity in Malaysia, with ethnic Malays obliged to be Muslim.

Ethnic Indians and Chinese who practise Hinduism and Buddhism are welcome to convert to Islam, but Muslims are not allowed to adopt another faith.

The Malaysian government confiscated 5,000 Bibles earlier this year
and it has now intercepted another 10,000.
Malaysian Muslims pray at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur (file photo)
But Christian leaders - representing a little under 10% of the population - say Malays have been using the word Allah to refer generally to God for hundreds of years.

Christians are now fighting back.

An Evangelical church launched a legal action in an attempt to win the right to refer to God as Allah in children's books.

The Roman Catholic Church has also gone to court after its newspaper in Malaysia was threatened with the loss of its licence if it continued to use the word.

Christians are turning the issue into one about how minorities are treated in Malaysia.

The Christian Federation of Malaysia says the country's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and it's asking whether that can still be meaningful if Christians are denied Bibles which use their own language.

So, Allah and God are two different people/concepts, and what about יַהְוֶה ?


Autor: Johanna | Permanent Link: 24.11.09

2 Kommentare:

  1. Johanna24. November 2009 um 22:16

    Obviously, (the belief in) the deity that Muhammad is said to have been a witness of, is different both from (the belief in) the Father whom Jesus of Nazareth witnessed and from (the belief in) the Israelites' deity. Speaking of the common Abrahamic root cannot hide this fact.

    Allah is the standard Arabic word for God. [...] It is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to "God". [↗Wikipedia]

    To my knowledge, the Malayan Christians' language is not Arabic. So, using the Arabic "Allah" in a Malay translation of the Bible is odd. Imagine the following English translation of the Apostles' Creed: "I believe in Allah, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary." Cui bono???
    But admittedly, prohibiting such odd versions is very strange, too.

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  2. Sanne27. November 2009 um 16:21

    "Tuhan" bedeutet Lord bzw. Herr auf Malayisch und soll eine alternative Übersetzung für Gott statt "Allah" sein. Vermutlich wurde aber Allah gewählt, gerade weil dieser Begriff durch den Islam bekannt war und auf die Ähnlichkeit der Konzepte hingewiesen werden sollte. "Tuhan" beschreibt nur eine Dimension des christlichen Gottes - für mich nicht umfassend genug. Arabischsprachige Christen bezeichnen Gott mit "Allah". Da all dies der malayischen Regierung bekannt sein dürfte, ist klar, dass ein Verbot von "Allah" in Bibelübersetzung und Lehrbüchern nur eine weitere Massnahme gegen Christen ist.
    Wenn "Tuhan" statt "Allah" tatsächlich Frieden und Toleranz fördern würde, dann wäre es gut, umzubenennen, aber für mich bleibt das eine Frage. Wenn "Tuhan" statt "Allah" jetzt bewußt und gewollt zur Abgrenzung vom Gottesbild im Islam benutzt wird, führt das zum Dialog?

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