After sharing this with Nil while we were heading out for our regular grocery shipping at Carrefour, not to mention, stocking up on food stuffs for our little one, something he said hit a note.

I thought the word referred to the same God shared by the Muslims and Christians.

So I went looking around to be doubly sure, not that I don’t trust him. His knowledge of world history and culture is far better than mine.

While Wikipedia cannot be a 100% correct source, it is interesting to note its entry on the word “Allah” as seen here:

While the term is best known in the West for its use by Muslims as a reference to God, it is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to “God”.

…

Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word “Allah” to mean “God”. The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for ‘God’ than ‘Allah’. (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Roman Catholic, uses Alla for ‘God’.) Arab Christians for example use terms Allah al-’ab meaning God the father, Allah al-ibn mean God the son, and Allah al-ruh al-quds meaning God the Holy Spirit (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God).

So really, outside of Malaysia, no one group has claimed exclusive right to use over this language. Just us silly Malaysians with our draconian concepts of language, ethnicity, religion and society.

It is also interesting to note that PAS – traditionally known to be highly religious AND political – agreed with the court’s ruling (that Christians and Jews may use the word) but “Muslim Youth Movement, Abim, have cast the use of the word Allah as a surreptitious effort on the part of Christians to try to seduce Muslims away from Islam” (source here).

Talk about men of little faith of themselves. If a word is all it takes to seduce a God-fearing Muslim away from Islam, then is he/she really all that God-fearing in the first place? Is it right if a person partook in religious rites like fasting, send out things like first communion invitations but gets all hostile about sharing their God in language with someone else?

It angers me at times to see the things going on back in Malaysia; and yet, I cannot help but feel a certain sense of relief than my daugther will never have to feel what I feel or see what I see. She will have a lifetime of witnessing man’s stupidity; she doesn’t need to start now.