On bank holiday Monday I was checking out the news on the BBC website, when I saw this rather interesting video.
Its about a Catholic Church in Malaysia, where they pray to Allah. Now you might say “eh???, how can Christians worship Allah?”
Well in the Malay language the word for God is Allah, so in order to worship in their own language, Malaysian Christians need to use the word Allah. Now the government of Malaysia has in the past suggested using the word Tuhan for God, however this apparently means Lord, so obviously Christians wish to use both words.
The sad thing is that this issue is now headed for the courts, as the country’s Muslim go up against the Christians over the right to call God, Allah. This dispute has been going on for some years now apparently and will the court is due to rule on the 28th May.
A senior official at the Internal Security Ministry’s publications control unit, has said.
“Christians cannot use the word Allah. It is only applicable to Muslims. Allah is only for the Muslim god. This is a design to confuse the Muslim people,”
So it seems as if the government believes that there are two Gods, one Muslim and the other Christian, now the word Allah is commonly used by Christians in other Islamic majority countries, such as Egypt, Iraq and Indonesia, and is also used in the Arabic Bible.
In Sura 112 of the Qur’an, interestingly enough called Unity, it is stated
“In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Say: He is God alone:
God the eternal!
He begetteth not, and He is not begotten;
And there is none like unto Him.”
The point I am trying to make is that Islam believes in only one single God, a God for both Christians and Muslims, not a separate one for each faith.
As a Bahá’í, I believe that there is only one God, no matter what you call him, whether that be Allah, Yahweh, Ahura Mazda or anything else, there is just one single infinite and loving God. As ‘Abdú’l-Baha said,
“There is one God; mankind is one; the foundations of religion are one. Let us worship Him, and give praise for all His great Prophets and Messengers who have manifested His brightness and glory.”
So lets pray that both sides in this argument can put aside their differences and try to work together, after all we all serve a single God, or Allah
God Bless
Michael
