Calling Names

And then it was nine:

Another Christian church has been attacked in Malaysia - the ninth such incident since Friday.

No one was injured in the attack on an evangelical Christian church, but buildings were damaged by what appear to have been home-made petrol bombs.

In another case a church was vandalised with black paint.

The attacks appear to have been triggered by a High Court ruling last month that overturned a government ban on non-Muslims using the word "Allah".

The government is appealing against the decision.

It's slightly misleading in English, because of course Allah is the Arabic word for God, and its use is limited to Muslims. But that isn't so elsewhere. From Wiki:

While the term is best known in the West for its use by Muslims as a reference to God, it is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to "God". The term was also used by pagan Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia.

So what's the problem?

Muslim groups argue that Christians using a word so closely associated with Islam could be a ploy to win converts.

Arab News puts it differently:

Malaysia’s Christians say they have used the word without incident for centuries, but the ruling party — which is vying for popularity among Muslims with the opposition Islamic party — insists it must be used only by Muslims.

It says that the use of “Allah” by Christians could cause confusion among Muslims and encourage religious conversion, which is illegal in Malaysia.

So, rather than a spontaneous eruption from the Muslim street, as it were, it's more a case of the deliberate stoking up of tensions by a government which knows that playing on Muslim chauvinism is always an easy option. It is, after all, the government which initially imposed the ban, and is now appealing the high court decision. But you still have to wonder at the mentality of resorting to violence over the name of a god.

Not, of course, that this intolerance is limited to Malaysia...

Comments

[Mr Grumpy]

Thanks for this post, Mick, good to know someone who isn't a Christian cares. You'd probably imagine that prayers are regularly offered in British churches for Christians facing persecution in other countries. Not so in my experience.

[Laban]

I believe that the Maltese word for God is 'Alla'.

A/c/t wikipedia, the Maltese language is derived from Siculo-Arabic, the Arabic dialect spoken in Italy and Sicily during the 200-odd years of Muslim domination. It's the only Semitic language in the EU and the only one that uses a Latin alphabet.