The Malay Mail Online – Fri, Oct 18, 2013KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 18 — The Christians’ fight for the right to call God “Allah” conveyed that they have no name for their deity, Perkasa chief Datuk Ibrahim Ali said today.
The outspoken politician insisted that the Arabic word belonged solely to Muslims, despite its common usage among adherents of various faiths in the Middle East and Malay-speaking Christians in East Malaysia.
“It shows that Christians have no name for their God, and that is why they fight hard to use the word Allah,” Ibrahim told The Malay Mail today.
“We do not want to become infidels by allowing other religions to use the word. Christians have to understand that it is not about making enemies... It is about faith, and because of that, we cannot allow the word ‘Allah’ to be used by other religions,” added the Malay rights group leader.
Perkasa is one of the most vocal groups calling for the Arabic word to be barred to non-Muslims here.
Iranian-American religious scholar Dr Reza Aslan said recently that the Court of Appeal’s ruling barring non-Muslims from referring to God as “Allah” showed Malaysia’s folly.
The ruling was also censured in several international publications, such as Indonesian daily Jakarta Post, which wrote an editorial yesterday that “those who claim exclusivity to God undermine their own faith, and inadvertently or not, preach polytheism”.
International current affairs magazine The Economist pointed out that Christians in the Middle East commonly refer to God as “Allah”, and called the court verdict an “unhelpful contribution” to religious discourse between Muslims and Christians.
Nesrine Malik, a commentator with UK newspaper The Guardian, wrote last Wednesday that the appellate court ruling was as “ridiculous as the UK passing a law saying that ‘God’ was a Christian designation, and therefore other religions had to find their own words for their own deities”.
She also said that the Muslims’ claim of a monopoly on “Allah” was paradoxical as it creates separate gods for separate religions, thus directly contradicting Prophet Muhammad’s message.
Opposition pact Pakatan Rakyat (PR) declared yesterday that it upheld the right of non-Muslims to refer to God as “Allah”.
On Monday, the Court of Appeal ruled against a 2009 High Court decision allowing the Catholic Church to refer to the Christian god with the Arabic word “Allah” in the Bahasa Malaysia section of its weekly paper, the Herald.
The court adjudged the usage of the word “Allah” as not integral to the Christian faith and said that allowing such an application would cause confusion in the Muslim community.
The Catholic Church has said that it will make an appeal to the Federal Court, the country’s highest court.
