Names

“Allah means God—unless you’re a Christian in Malaysia,” read Time magazine’s headline. Or Sikh, Hindu or atheist for that matter. A new Kuala Lumpur court decision stipulates only Muslims can invoke the name of “Allah”. And that triggered concern beyond Association of Southeast Asian Nation countries.

Four years back, KL courts ruled that the term “Allah” transcended different faiths. Why then the flip-flop? “Islam (is) vulnerable e to conversion efforts by other faiths,” the decision asserts.  Anyway, Allah was "not an integral part...in Christianity".

No? Herald editor, Fr. Lawrence Andrew, said he’ll appeal. Non-Muslim Malaysians reacted with anger. “Appalling,” snapped Jagir Singh who heads the Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Taoism. “Bahasa Malaysia–speaking Christians used “Allah” even before formation of Malaysia,” recalled Rev. Eu Hong Seng,

Sabah and Sarawak churches, where Christians are a majority, protested. As they have done for years, they’d invoke “Allah” in worship and in the “Al-Kitab”—the Bahasa Malaysian version of the bible. Malaysia’s Parliament, in 2011, allowed circulation of “Al-Kitab’. Today’s ruling fractured the “10-point solution” by KL.

This rekindled 2007’s uproar when government claimed a franchise on “Allah". It confiscated 15,100 bibles, printed in Indonesia, which used the word “Allah”. After the High Court shredded that ban, in December 2009, non-Muslim places of worship, including Sikh temples, were ransacked.

“Islam is the religion of the federation but other religions may be practiced in peace and harmony,” says the Malaysian Constitution. Malaysia signed up to the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 undergirds “freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.”

Those principles apply to ethnic Malays who form two-thirds of Malaysia’s 28 million people. Chinese and Indians number 22 percent and 7 percent respectively. About 9 percent of Malaysians are Christian.  

See the issue in the context of next door Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia.  

Muslims here form 5 percent of population. Catholics constitute 83 percent, Iglesia Ni Cristo 2.3 percent. No one dictates how anyone addresses a “God Of A Hundred Names” as Barbara Greene and Victor Gollancz title their book on prayers of various faiths. Banning titles of divinity would constitute prior restraint. And that’d fracture the Philippine constitution’s shield for liberty of expression.

Religious intolerance can trigger strife, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong cautioned. “Public debate cannot be on whose religion is right and whose is wrong,” but on   rational considerations of public interest…"

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population (205 million). They account for 13 percent of the world’s Muslims. But “no one who believes in the power of one supreme God can claim exclusivity,” warned Endy M. Bayuni, Jakarta Post senior editor, a founding member of the International Association of Religion Journalists “There is no such thing as the God for Catholics, or Allah for Muslims....

“Indonesia and Malaysia may rightfully claim to have developed a more moderate strand of Islam.  But there is only a thin line dividing tolerance and intolerance, so we should not take this moderation for granted...”

The claim to a monopoly on "Allah" is absurd, wrote opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim in Wall Street Journal. “Arabic's sister Semitic languages” used similar words for the Deity, namely ‘Elaha’ in Aramaic and ‘Elohim’ in Hebrew. “Historical manuscripts prove that Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians and Jews collectively prayed to God... as Allah for over 1,400 years.” 

“Go into any church in the Middle East and you will hear the chant: "Quddusan Allah, Quddusan al-Qawi" ("Holy God, Holy and Strong..."), the Economist notes. They’ve been doing so for centuries.

Kuala Lumpur’s ruling party and United National Malays Organization welcomed the court straitjacket. “This is to appease extremist supporters after hard-pressed Prime Minister Najib Razak scraped thru with a thin majority,” wrote Parliamentarian Mujahid Yusof Rawa. The  parties play the “radical and religious car” to woo votes. “Malaysia is not prepared for  mature interfaith relationships.”

Ethnicity has been a key facet of Malaysian politics since colonial times. But this intensified after 1971 bloody race riots. Affirmative action was then cobbled for the bumiputra, or “sons of the soil” as Malay and smaller indigenous minorities call themselves.

“Move to another country,” snapped spokesperson Abdullah Zaik Rahman. Those who disagreed with the Court means “they no longer accept the supremacy of Islam.”

No, former law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim told the Malay Mail.  “We should instead   get (these hardliners) to move over to Saudi Arabia. There, sovereignty of Islam is not to be questioned....  We have become a nation we were not”.

Indeed, the “beginning of wisdom is to call all things by their right names,” a Chinese proverb teaches. The world’s major faiths share a deep reverence for Divinity’s name. Muslims have 95 other names for Allah. Jews would not address God directly. And many where scandalized when Jesus taught his disciples: “Say Our Father…’Abba’”. Tatay. Dad. Ama.

Names have a function. Adam, Genesis tells us, named all creatures. And on the night before He died, Christ prayed for others: “Protect them with the Name you gave to me.”