April 2009

No hidden agenda to confuse Muslims

source: heraldmalaysia
By Fr Lawrence Andrew, SJ

Kuala Lumpur: A Malay- Arabic word has been politicized and it has become the bone of contention for some people. The Kuala Terengganu UMNO delegate Datuk Zubir mbong at their recently concluded UMNO General Assembly said that he was “very suspicious why Christians want to translate the word God into ‘Allah’. I think they want to confuse young Muslims.�

To begin with, the Christians object to the statement of Datuk Zubir. Second, we have not translated the word ‘God’ into ‘Allah’ recently. To say that we have done so only now is to ignore history. We have historical evidence that the word has been in use even before the first Malay-Latin Dictionary was printed in 1631. To be more precise, the word ‘Allah’ was used even before the Sultanate of Johore and the neighbouring States became colonies of the Dutch and the British kingdoms.

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