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CAN ALLAH BE MONOPOLISED BY ANY COMMUNITY?
Ali Engineer, Asghar
Ali Engineer, Asghar
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"The Malays who oppose the use of word Allah by Christians, argue that this will confuse ordinary Malays and in view of missionary activities of Catholic Christians, they may convert to Christianity and they want to ward off this confusion among Malays. This may have its own rationale but the problem has to be solved through dialogue and mutual understanding. But the problem is that some politicians would like to exploit such controversies to their benefit. In fact those who object to use of word Allah by Christians are on weak grounds. As Allah is one and creator of all of us cannot be monopolized by any one religious, much less linguistic community. The word Allah in Arabic was in use before Islam appeared on the scene in Mecca. As Maulana Azad points out in his Tarjuman al-Qur’an the word Allah is derived linguistically from pre-Islamic ‘eel’ as in Jibra’il or Israf’il etc. The word is Hebrew was also iloh or ilah and by adding ‘al’ (which in English is used for ‘the’). Thus al-ilah (the God) became Allah in Arabic and was used for supreme God. In fact Muslims should welcome if non-Muslims too use the word Allah for God or Ishwar etc. How can one object to use of Allah by others? Anyone who learns Arabic and talks about God will have to use word Allah."(pg 1)
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With permission of the license/copyright holder