Comments on: [1480] Of god, God, allah, Allah, tuhan and Tuhan

By: bobjots : redux | The Name of God : Attempting To Move Beyond The Polemics

bobjots : redux | The Name of God : Attempting To Move Beyond The Polemics — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:28:08 +0000

[...] the Malay language is not the Arabic language. Fellow blogger; Hafiz Noor Shams; presents a well written introduction of how the original Arabic term Allah has evolved from a common noun to a proper noun in the Malay [...]

By: Hafiz Noor Shams

Hafiz Noor Shams — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:29:13 +0000

thanks for the correction

By: andrew

andrew — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:12:21 +0000

Allah is a proper noun in Arabic.

1. The common noun for god (or a god for that matter) is “ilah,” which is pronounced with a thin “l” as fikri writes.

2. To proper-ize a common noun in Arabic, you add an al- to the word. For example, a chair is “kursi;” the chair is “al-kursi.” You never ever ever add al- to Allah; there is no such thing as al-Allah.

By: the __earthinc » Blog Archive » [2144] Of libertarian position on the Allah controversy

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:28:28 +0000

[...] clarified my position while trying to explain why some more conservative Muslims in Malaysia object to the use of the term Allah by Christians in Malaysia; right or wrong, that is their position [...]

By: The Name of God : Attempting To Move Beyond The Polemics : Bolehland

The Name of God : Attempting To Move Beyond The Polemics : Bolehland — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:10:57 +0000

By: Tuhan, Dewa, Allah for wording of the Constitution? « Shariah @ National Law

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:41:13 +0000

[...] the __earthinc » Blog Archive » [1480] Of god, God, allah, Allah, tuhan and Tuhan [...]

By: Fikri

Fikri — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:29:32 +0000

Writing, Speech, and Difference
Indonesian Muslims and Christian write the same letters “Allah”, but speak it differently. Muslims pronounce it with thick “l”, but Christians pronounce it with thin “l”. This difference is unnoticed when it is written. That is the way Indonesian Muslims maintain their difference from fellow Christians.
On the other hand, Malaysian Muslims would like to keep their difference from Christians both in writing and speech.

By: jelas.info » La ilaha illallah? Semantics and Strategy

jelas.info » La ilaha illallah? Semantics and Strategy — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:26:49 +0000

[...] on, Hafiz offers the difference between proper and common nouns, while Tricia – as I would – turns first to [...]

By: bobjots : redux

bobjots : redux — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 13:31:35 +0000

The Name of God : Attempting To Move Beyond The Polemics…

The general reaction towards the impending non-renewal of the publication permit of the Roman Catholic Church’s newspaper, Herald, has generally taken two main approaches : The Muslim PerspectiveThe assertion of the right to restrict the use of the te…

By: Bob K

Bob K — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 09:59:58 +0000

You might have struck the nail square centre here – ie. the polemics.

While I am concerned about this issue, my concern is primarily on the use of the publication permit regime to regulate the flow of information.

The usage of the term “Allah” only ever becomes an issue when there’s political mileage to be gained.

One related event that went unreported was the condition imposed by the Internal Security Ministry on the Council of Churches of Malaysia to change the title of their official organ from “Berita CCM” to “CCM News” as a pre-requisite for extension of their publication permit.

Incidentally, both the Herald and Berita CCM has been a bit less “mainstream” in their coverage of recent events and current affairs.

A coincidence? I think not.

Umno knows it needs Malay support with the non-Malay ground as shaky as it is at this moment. They tried the ethnic pride angle with the recent Hindraf rally and this apparently has not generated the type of reaction that they expect. This could just be another angle .. one of Malay-Muslim solidarity perhaps?

By: Hafiz Noor Shams

Hafiz Noor Shams — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 03:19:59 +0000

Dear Bob, Thank you for the explanation. While I agree a dialog is better than outright ban, dialog is hard is polemics is all people are interested in. For instance, when I tried to discuss the matter here, but all I get is accusation of this and that but almost none that address the issue.

By: Bob K

Bob K — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:52:50 +0000

My earlier comment, of course, dealt with this issue only from a Christian perspective. It doesn’t even begin to engage the problem with the Sikh community which uses “Allah” as a common term for God right from the start.

By: Bob K

Bob K — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 19:50:24 +0000

From the Christian perspective, part of the problem comes from the difficulty in translating the terms “Adonai”, “YHWH”, “El”, “Eloh” and “Elohim” into the Malay language.

As a result, common convention was used and the historical precedent of using the proper noun “Allah” since the first Malay language translation of the Bible in the 17th century was retained (interestingly this translation pre-dated the currently popular among conservatives Authorised Version of the English language Bible).

In the Hebrew scriptures, the combination of “Adonai YHWH” is used a lot and is commonly translated into English as “Lord God”. In Malay it became Tuhan Allah. Convention in English translations saw the use of the term “Lord” where “Adonai” was used separately from the term “YHWH” and the latter being translated as “LORD” (in upper case). This same convention is used with Malay translations (vis a vis “Tuhan” and “TUHAN”).

Granted there are some major issues here for both communities but I believe these problems can be solved through dialogue rather than a blanket ban.