Allah Debate Spreads to Malaysia

Three churches were fire-bombed last night by Muslims upset over a court ruling permitting Christians to use the term Allah in a Catholic newspaper.  It was previously illegal for non-Muslims to use the term for God, which is Arabic.  'Allah' means 'the-God.'  

It is interesting to me that this is far less of an issue in the Middle East, where Christians and Muslims have lived side by side for thousands of years.  I suppose in the Middle East, they know Arabic... hence it is a non-issue.  There is no other appropriate term for God.  Lest you think this is just an Asian Muslim issue, some Christians (mostly evangelicals of course) have taken vehement issue with the term as well, insisting that Allah is not God and that Arab Christians should not use the term.  I have personally heard the statement ''Allah is not God'  from the lips of many well meaning evangelicals. Of course, these individuals don't speak Arabic either.

The word “God” does not actually appear in the original Hebrew or Greek manuscripts of the Bible. “God” is an old English word which developed from an Indo-European word, meaning “that which is invoked,” which is also the ancestor of the German word Gott (meaning: God). 

The following is from Building Bridges by Fouad Accad p. 22):

“…It’s interesting to observe that, in rejecting the Athenian’s erroneous concept of God, Paul did not reject the word they used for God, Theos, which was the common Greek word for God.

Some Christians unthinkingly say 'Allah is not God.' This is the ultimate blasphemy to Muslims, and furthermore, it is difficult to understand. Allah is the primary Arabic word for God. It means 'The God.' There are some minor exceptions. For example, the Bible in some Muslim lands uses a word for God other than Allah (Farsi and Urdu are examples). But for more than five hundred years before Muhammad, the vast majority of Jews and Christians in Arabia called God by the name Allah. How, then, can we say that Allah is an invalid name for God? If it is, to whom have these Jews and Christians been praying?

And what about the 10 to 12 million Arab Christians today? They have been calling God ‘Allah’ in their Bibles, hymns, poems, writings, and worship for over nineteen centuries. What an insult to them when we tell them not to use this word ‘Allah’! Instead of bridging the distance between Muslims and Christians, we widen the gulf of separation between them and us when we promote such a doctrine. Those who still insist that it is blasphemy to refer to God as Allah should also consider that Muhammad’s father was named Abd Allah, ‘God’s servant,’ many years before his son was born or Islam was founded!”

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