Bibles seized as Malaysia minorities fear fundamentalism.
Authorities in Malaysia have seized more than 20,000 Bibles in recent months because they refer to God as “Allah,” Christian leaders said Thursday.
The seizures have fed fears among minority groups, which see signs of encroaching Islamic fundamentalism in the predominantly Muslim but multi-racial country.
“There is a growing sense of Islamic assertion, yes,” said the Rev. Hermen Shastri, general-secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia. “There is some concern.”
The Bibles were written in the country’s official language, Malay — in which the word for God is “Allah,” as it is in Arabic. However, Malaysia’s government says the word is exclusive to Islam.
Historyscoper 3:09 pm on October 29, 2009 Permalink |
The correct word is “Ass Clown”
Pretty Pink Unicorns 4:40 pm on October 29, 2009 Permalink |
Man, STFU, troll.
bingregory 8:54 am on October 30, 2009 Permalink |
I’ve written about this in the past, but the choice to use Allah is a bit odd, because the more common Malay word for God is Tuhan. Malays are in my experience much more likely to use Tuhan in speech and Allah in common formulas like inshallah and alhamdulillah. So the decision to render it as Allah is almost certainly in order to play up similarities between Islam and Christianity. There is still no grounds to forbid such a translation in my mind – Christians are just as likely to get confused or misled and find Islam as the reverse, for one thing. But it is not as though Allah was the only or even the most likely choice for a Malay-language Bible.