Christians in Southeast Asia are debating their right to refer to God as Allah, writes Christianity Today.
To Malaysian and Indonesian Christians, Allah is simply the word for God. However, state laws frequently ban Christians and other non-Muslims from using the term, on the grounds that it will cause confusion among Muslim believers and threaten the security of the nation.
So in Malaysia, teen singer Agnes Monica has had her song Allah Peduli ("God Cares") banned, and Malaysia's Ministry of Home Affairs has sent letters to the editor of the national Catholic newspaper, The Herald, asking him to cease using Allah in the paper's Malay edition or face the threat of banning.

Perhaps in anticipation of another unfavorable ruling, the Indonesian organization Yayasan Lentera Bangsa has published a new translation of the Bible in Indonesian. Allah does not appear in the Kitab Suci Indonesian Literal Translation (KS-ILT). Instead, the publishers transliterated Hebrew terms (such as Elohim) and substituted some less-common Indonesian names for God.

Mainstream churches, however, have been hostile to the KS-ILT. Neither the Bible Society of Indonesia nor that of Malaysia has approved the translation. The National Evangelical Christian Fellowship (NECF) of Malaysia issued a statement "strongly opposing" the translation. "We continue to maintain the right to use Allah as it has been so used for over 300 years in Malaysia," the group said.
Evangelical observers support NECF's move. "Theologically and missiologically, Allah is a very appropriate way [for Southeast Asian Christians] to refer to God," said Ajith Fernando, national director of Youth for Christ in Sri Lanka.

Chrsitianity Today says that Christians and Muslims sometimes misunderstand Allah to be purely Islamic. Instead, it is the Arabic word for God and a close semantic relative of the Hebrew El. In many Central Asian countries, Muslims use Khuda, the Persian word for God, rather than Allah. Christians in Palestine and other Arabic-speaking communities also refer to God as Allah.

The term spread to Southeast Asia in the 1100s as Muslim sultanates were established. It then became incorporated into the Malay language family, which includes Malaysian and Indonesian.

Outlawing its use by non-Muslims is as silly as arguing that breakfast cannot be used by people who mean anything other than cereal with milk, says The Herald's editor, Lawrence Andrew. "The word God has no content other than what one's belief posits."
Andrew says the crackdown on his newspaper indicates "the country is moving away from the multireligious and multiethnic composition that negotiated independence from the British to a domination of one race over all."
Read the full article here.

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