Posted on 01/05/2014 6:56:34 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Malaysian Islamic authorities have seized more than 300 copies of the Bible from the Bible Society of Malaysia (BSM), over the use of the word "Allah" in native translations.
BSM was accused of violating the law by using the word "Allah" to refer to God in Bahasa and Iban language Bibles.
Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) officers, accompanied by two policemen, raided the Society's offices and carried away 321 copies of the Bible.
Two members of the BSM council were detained and taken to a local police station, but released later on bail.
The controversy over the word "Allah" goes back to 2008 when The Herald, a Catholic weekly, was barred by the home ministry from using the Arabic word.
The Catholic Church argued that it has used the word to refer to God for centuries and that the home ministry's ruling violated the believers' rights.
The Church contested this 'law' in the High Court, which ruled in the Church's favour in 2009 and upheld its constitutional right to use the word.
The decision was challenged in the Court of Appeal, which overturned the earlier judgment and ruled that "Allah was not integral to the Christian faith", the Malaysian Insider had reported.
The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the ruling political party, said that its Jais members would protest at all churches in the state of Selangor against the unauthorised use of the word Allah, according to Reuters.
"There are laws in Selangor and there was a decree by his Royal Highness the Sultan. So what they are doing is carrying out the Sultan's decree," said Muhyiddin Yassin, Deputy Prime Minister and UMNO Deputy President.
However, the Bible Society maintains that they have done nothing against the law by using the word "Allah" in local translations.
The Society said the word "Allah" in the Bible "is nothing new and should not come as a surprise, this is what we do, import Bibles containing the word as allowed in the 10-point solution made by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Idris Jala".
"We were told that we were under investigation for breaking a Selangor state law banning non-Muslims from using the word Allah," Lee Min Choon, Chairman BSM, told Reuters.
"BSM is of the view that this action contravenes a host of legal provisions, including that of the Federal Constitution. This is a sad day, heralding the erosion of minority rights," he added.
The Council of Churches of Malaysia said in a statement it was "alarmed" by the raid and urged the government to "protect religious rights as provided under the Federal Constitution".
The raid is unusual as it was the first time Islamic authorities entered the premises belonging to a Christian organisation to seize Bibles.
Analysts also say the new rulings could be a way of covering up other unpopular measures by Prime Minister Najib Razak's government, such as subsidy cuts for electricity, petrol and sugar, which are expected to hit the poor in the country.
The recent events have raised concern that Islamic law is gaining dominance over the civil courts in Malaysia.
A sign of the times.
Will happenings such as this bring all Christians together?
I certainly sympathize with the Catholics. But maybe it’s time to go back to the old word for God that was used before the Muzzies came in and conquered the country.
The thing is, if you consider what the Koran and the Muslims SAY about Allah, then Allah is NOT God in any meaningful sense. There is no real resemblance between the Muslim Allah and the biblical God.
It’s all very well to say that Islam is a monotheistic religion, but what kind of god are we talking about?
Islam is a war plan.
“allah”
occurs in 0 verses in the KJV.
There are no concordance results for “allah” in the KJV.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/index.cfm
Just is case there was any question about whether muzzies worship the God of Abraham and Jesus.
RE: I certainly sympathize with the Catholics. But maybe it’s time to go back to the old word for God that was used before the Muzzies came in and conquered the country.
The Malay and Indonesian language (mutually intelligible but differing in spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary) have an original term for God — TUHAN.
That was long before the Arabs came to their soil.
I didn’t remember the word Tuhan, but that’s what I thought. It would be expensive to revise the Bibles and other books, and maybe a bit confusing for a while, but why not dump the Muslim Allah, which was originally imposed on them? Frankly, the word Allah is pretty demonic, IMHO, the more you look into what Muslims and the Koran have to say about it.
One day a bunch of fallen angels were hanging out together, bored, surly, and wanting to play a cruel joke on mankind while mocking God. They decided to create a religion that would enslave its subjects, and assure that people under its heavy yoke would live in despair, hopelessness, poverty, violence and ignorance. To start their religion they found the most sadistic, perverted, immoral, brutal and corrupt man on Earth, and they pared him with a pagan composite of a mythological god who hated mankind as much as they did. The man they chose to use was Mohammed, and the god they chose to pair him with was Allah. They were a match made in hell for the express purpose of bringing hell to mankind, and religion was the way to pull it all off. Thus was born Islam.
I think bartenders should invent alcoholic drinks using allah’s name just to get those Muzzies’ dirty night shirts in a collective wad.
God = Jehovah = El-Olam and lots of other names in the Old and New Testaments in various ancient and modern languages.
Allah is not equivalent to any of the above. It refers to an entirely different entity. On that one point, I agree with the Malaysian muslimes.
TUHAN also can mean Sir, Mr., Lord.
Allah is the word for God that has always been used in Arabic translations of the Bible. Allah is much closer to the ancient Hebrew and Aramaic words found in the original languages than the English word “God”.
More even than that... The name "Allah" is literally "The God" ("al-" the definite article "the", and "ilah" meaning god).
Its use as a name of (a monotheistic) God has been recorded and documented back to 500 B.C. -- a THOUSAND years before Islam.
Its use as a proper name (by Islam for their god) is analogous to our (Christian) use of "God" as the proper name of the God of Abraham, although the Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, and other names also are correct for the Christian God.
But like everything else it touches, Islam will step all over and corrupt the ancient word and its usage, claiming it solely for itself. It is one of the most historically-ignorant, intolerant "religions" in the history of the world.
With regard to the use of "Allah" in Islam as the proper name of the god of Islam, I agree it's a different entity.
But please see my comment #17 above. "Allah" is not an incorrect name for our Christian God, since in many languages it is exactly analogous to us calling our deity "God" (rather than, say, "Yahweh"). It's just language usage, and the name "Allah" predates Islam by a thousand years. It's historically bogus for Islam to confiscate the term and force-apply it only to the god of Mohammed.
I always wonder what Islam is in regards to God’s plan.
RE: TUHAN also can mean Sir, Mr., Lord.
Well what to say, when we call God, Lord, do people confuse it with just any other human lord?
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