I picked this up from Lucia ‘s blog who got it from Annil Netto‘s blog.
Good news: Herald receives it new publishing permit!
Some good news at long last. Just got a call from The Herald editor, Fr Lawrence Andrew.
The Herald has received its new annual publishing permit – without any condition! Nothing mentioned about the use of the word “Allah”; and no order for it to drop its Malay-language section.
The new permit was hand-delivered to the Herald office today, on a Sunday. Imagine, a government dept working on a Sunday 🙂
Praise the Lord!
To those who were not aware of this issue, The Herald is a weekly newsletter which is for private circulation to the Catholic churches in Malaysia. It is printed in four languages, i.e. Bahasa Malaysia, Tamil, Mandarin and English. In the Bahasa Malaysia version of the Bible, God is referred as Allah and Lord is referred as Tuhan. So, in The Herald, there is mention of Allah. Recently, our Deputy Internal Security Minister quoted (or demanded) that the Bahasa Malaysia section be taken away and he went on to claim that only Muslims can use the term Allah so as not to confuse the Muslims. You can read some of my opinions on the use of Allah by Catholics on this matter. I have closed the comment on the other post to avoid further arguments.
One of the thing that I often pray is to ask the Lord to give me the wisdom to know when to shut up and to have the courage when I have to talk. I think it is futile to argue on this issue on who has the rights and who has no rights. Instead, we should all be glad that we actually have the faith to believe in the Almighty.
“A rose by any other name will smell as sweet.” Call whatever name also the same if in their everyday lives, people do not reflect the teachings of their faith. Action speaks louder than words.
Praise God!! I was brought up to use the word Allah when we had prise and worship in Bahasa Malaysia. Don’t we have the same God? Don’t understand what all the fuse was about.
this is certainly good news. I am glad there was no confrontation. I know the Christians will not step back on this and I was really afraid the Muslims will take action. Glad it’s settled now.
Ignorance is bliss – Pt. 1
Surah 29:46 Muslims are told by Allah, not to question the authority of the scriptures of the Christians, saying, “And dispute ye not with the People of the Book, but say, “We believe in the revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our Allah and your Allah is one;
Although the Koran stated that Allah is the one God worshiped by Jews and Christians beside Muslims HOWEVER Muslims DO NOT pray to the same God (Yahweh) as Christians and Jews! Yahweh is transliterated from the Hebrew YHVH.
It was Muhammad that tried to confuse the Jews and Christians by stating that their God was the same as his Allah.
Before Muhammad the Arabs had 365 gods – one for each day of the year. Muhammad picked Allah (Al-Iahi), who was the Arab moon god, their war god, and their sword god.
WHO IS ALLAH?
Allah has pagan beginnings
The Black Meteor inside the Kaba
aka: Ka’bah aka: kabah
The stone has been attacked many times and is now composed of several pieces and fragments, bound together by a silver ligature.
Pre-Islamic history tells us that many Arabian tribes were stone worshippers. This is also mentioned in Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol 5, #661. The Old Testament also talks about Mideast pagan groups that worshipped stones.
When Muhammad was born in Mecca, each Arab tribe in Mecca had their own deity. There was a large black meteor found in the desert which many Arabs believed was sent to them by astral deities. This rock was placed in the southeast corner of the cube-shaped structure in Mecca. The arabs knew this rock as the Ka’ba, which means stone. The black rock’s diameter is about 12 inches. It is reddish black in color, and has red and yellow particles. During this time before Islam this stone was part of the shrine to worship of a chief male god (among over 350 other gods) who was known as Hubal. The black meteor stone was said to symbolize a nature god known as al-Hajar al-Aswad. Hubal was an oracular deity whose statue — in human form and made of red carneol — stood in the Ka’ba until Muhammad destroyed it. The Kaba is about 50 feet high, and the walls are about 40 feet long. The facade contains the door, which starts at 7 feet off the ground, and faces N.E.. To enter the Kaba, a ladder must be used. Also built in the eastern corner, is another stone called “lucky”. This stone is only touched, not kissed. Pagans called out the names of their pagan gods as they circled the Kaba the same as Muslims do today, calling out Allah’s name. Early Meccan Pagans also ran between the nearby hills. Muhammad authorized Muslims to do that in the Quran, and Muhammad probably ran between the hills himself. So, even before Muhammad pagans were worshipping this black stone in the Kaba. Are we surprised that although Muhammad proclaimed only one God, he continued to participate in idol worship at this pagan shrine (Kaba); and Muslims still do idol worship there today? The black stone of Ka’aba is nothing but a holdover within Islam, from pre-Islamic paganism.
There is evidence that black stones were commonly worshipped in the Arab world. In 190 A.D. Clement of Alexandria mentioned that “the Arabs worship stone”. He was alluding to the black stone of Dusares at Petra. In the 2nd century, Maximus Tyrius wrote; “The Arabians pay homage to I know not what god, which they represent by a quadrangular stone”. Maximus was speaking of the Kaaba (Ka’ba) that contains the Black Stone.
The Qurash (aka: Quraish) tribe which Muhammad belonged to was in charge of idol worship at the Ka’ba Shrine. The chief god of Muhammad’s tribe was one of the three sister goddesses called al-Uzza, the youngest of the three daughters of the pre-Islamic Allah and the patron goddess of Mecca. Her name means “the mighty one”. The other two were named “al-Lat and “al-Manat”. It was only by chance that a fortune teller counseled Muhammad’s grandfather against sacrificing Muhammad’s father to this al-Uzza pagan diety. The head of these pagan, animalistic deities was “Al-llah”. It is believed that “al-llah” in Muhammad’s time before Islam referred to a vague moon god and that Muhammad believed that al-Uzza was a daughter of this “al-llah”.
The Qurash tribe’s Allah corresponded to the god Bel, which is another name of the Assyrio-Babylonian gods En-lil and Marduk. It has the same meaning as Baal. The Arabic today translates the word Allah as “God”. Muhammad’s father’s name was Abd All?h ibn ‘Abd al-Mullalib. “Abd-Allah” means slave of Allah. When Muhammad says there is only one god – Allah – now you have an idea what his background / thinking was; and who this Allah actually is.
Therefore what the Malaysian Govt. is doing (unwittingly) is actually correcting the “errors” propagated by Muhammad.
I think it best Fr. Lawrence Andrew refer the matter to the Archbishop and get a ruling from the Holy See.