Which one do we have to consider the most ? 14,000 compared to 16,800,000 muslims in this country?
We are not alienating the minority but we want them to consider the feelings of the majority.
And the christian catholics are very free to preach and they do have choices in the names of their god.
Why can't they r the one to give way in this issue?
Why must the 16,800,000 muslims people in this country?
wan zaharizan b wan zan has left a new comment on the post "Perkataan 'Allah' - Pembohongan Anwar Ibrahim.":
You said clearly! Please go to m blog and read what i have to say, please do! BTW When Tun Ismail and the rest of the former Minister of home affairs approve did it create confusion. What is important is to limit her usage which has been done over the years! The readership of the Herald is only 14000!, so tell me how does it create confusion!
DR NOVANDRI HASAN BASRI has left a new comment on the post "Perkataan 'Allah' - Pembohongan Anwar Ibrahim.":
Wan Zaharizan,
Read my comment again. I'm not talking about 'afraid' here but they should consider the feeling of the majority.
And what are you trying to prove here : "After all di Perang Badar 3000 of us with the help of God no Allah (God in English must be for Christian thus we Muslim must not say GOd takut Imam tergugat) can defeat the mighty Quraish maybe 14000 of them can beat up 16.8 million muslim and defeat them yes with the help of God not Allah but God!"
Please read my article again. If u r not a muslim, u can write as u've written as above but if u r, please use the word 'Allah'.
What we are doing now is for a good cause which is to avoid further conflicts and unpleasant issues without undermining the freedom of other religions in this country.
Is it difficult to ask?
This last comment waiting for moderator approval
Ahh so i touch a sensitive nerve! Dr Novandri please look at my comment again! I use God because I am talking about Christian readership which Herald has about 14000 as oppose to Muslim which you say is 16.8 million of them thus if they jihad or went into a crusade with the Muslim they ask God not Allah and remember we as muslim forbid them to use that word so what is that got to do with me being a Muslim! If they defeat us it must be with the help of God if we defeat them which we should then it must be dengan keizinan Allah bukan God!
Asking me if i am a Muslim is very low which I expected from UMNO Muslim. sayang sekali apabila kita dengar bacaan talqin kita diberitahu apabila Mungkar dan Nangkar datang dan bertanya who is our leader we said Muhammad pbuh but sadly none of us follow his atribute which is bijaksana tawadduk Siddiq dan berhikmah serta berdakwah dan bersifat adil. Di mana letak bijaksana kita, keadilan kita, rendah diri kita penyampain kita dan bercakap benar. Kenapa kah kita selalu dusta! Who is a Muslim you or me?
DR NOVANDRI HASAN BASRI has left a new comment on the post "Perkataan 'Allah' - Pembohongan Anwar Ibrahim.":
Wan Zaharizan,
Well,the bottom line is the use of word 'Allah' by other religions are forbidden.
We'll refer to Fatwa Majlis Kebangsaan decision.
Read my new articles. Tq.
wan zaharizan b wan zan has left a new comment on the post "Perkataan 'Allah' - Pembohongan Anwar Ibrahim.":
Good now you hide behind laws and i wish every malay Muslim do so! Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan in 1993 mengharamkan rokok do my malay friends in UMNO stop smoking? Do you smoke?, I don't!
Another fatwa was about kongsi raya, do you know this is not encourage and wrong but do UMNO listen. hmmm jangan ikut tapi tak buat!
DR NOVANDRI HASAN BASRI has left a new comment on the post "Perkataan 'Allah' - Pembohongan Anwar Ibrahim.":
Wan Zaharizan,
I'm not hiding behind laws but i want to know the truth.
And i believe that u want too. Alhamdulillah.
And UMNO in smoking issue? UMNO in kongsi raya?
Check your facts right. This is not an UMNO issues but by all political parties in this country.
PAS & Keadilan attended kongsi raya. They smoked too.
But I do believe and hope that u criticised PAS and Pakatan Rakyat for the smoking and kongsi raya issues as the same as u hv done here in my blog.
This comment is awaiting moderator approval
Yes I told people off in their face UMNO and PAS alike about smoking but it is up to them to take heed.
We end here after all frodo says it is boring and after seeing so much Lord of the rings which Majlis Fatwa would sat syirik because the books talk about elves fairies and magic lest I become an apostate!
Ku Li says an intolerant Umno is fanning racial sentiments
Tengku Razaleigh says Umno’s response to the ‘Allah’ controversy is ‘short of leadership and moral fibre’. — File pic
Consultant Editor
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 7 — Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah lashed out at Umno today over its strident position on the “Allah” controversy, pointing out that the party was bent on fanning communal sentiment and digging itself into an intolerant hardline position with no parallel in the Muslim world.
He also suggested that racially-based parties should no longer be allowed to contest elections in multiracial Malaysia.
Speaking in Singapore today at the ISEAS regional outlook forum, his scathing remarks comes as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak shored up Umno and the government’s position over the Allah controversy by backing the right of Muslim groups to hold a public demonstration tomorrow.
Umno and a number of Muslim NGOs have been in an uproar over the recent High Court ruling allowing the Catholic church’s Herald newspaper to use the word “Allah” to refer to God in its Bahasa Malaysia section.
The government has filed an appeal against the ruling and yesterday it won a stay of execution.
The Islamist PAS, however, has backed the court’s ruling by pointing out that the word “Allah” can be used by those of the Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Tengku Razaleigh suggested today that the rejection of Umno and the Barisan Nasional (BN) communal politics model by large swathes of voters in Election 2008 had led the Malay nationalist party to pursue racial issues more stridently.
“They think this will shore up their ’base’. They are mistaken about the nature of that base. As they do so, they become more extreme and out of touch with ordinary voters of every race and religion whose major concerns are not racial or religious identity but matters such as corruption, security, the economy and education.”
He cited as an example the “Allah” controversy.
“In a milestone moment, PAS, the Islamic party, is holding onto the more plural and moderate position while Umno is digging itself into an intolerant hard-line position that has no parallel that I know of in the Muslim world.
“Umno is fanning communal sentiment, and the government it leads is taking up policy lines based on ‘sensitivities’ rather than principle. The issue appears to be more about racial sentiment than religious, let alone constitutional principles,” he said in his luncheon address.
He said Umno’s response to the “Allah” controversy was “short of leadership and moral fibre.”
Tengku Razaleigh’s latest attack on Umno and the government is not likely to go down well with the hardline conservatives in his party.
But the Umno veteran has been unrelenting in his call for reforms in Umno. Recently, he also slammed the BN government’s position in refusing to give oil royalties to Kelantan, which is ruled by PAS.
On the “Allah” issue, the former Finance Minister is particularly scathing in his remarks.
“Sensitivities is the favoured resort of the gutter politician. With it he raises a mob, fans its resentment and helps it discover a growing list of other sensitivities. This is a road to ruin. A nation is made up of citizens bound by a shared conception of justice and not of mobs extracting satisfaction for politicised emotional states,” he said.
Tengku Razaleigh said that when the government began speaking the language of sensitivities, it was a mark of the country’s decline.
He said the controversy over the use of “Allah” should not be about managing sensitivities but about doing what was right.
“This is what government sounds like when a political system and its leadership have come unstuck from the rule of law. It goes from issue to issue, hostage to the brinksmanship of sensitivities. Small matters threaten to erupt into racial conflict.
“The government of a multiracial society that cannot rise above sentiment is clearly too weak or too self-interested to hold the country together. It has lost credibility and legitimacy. The regime is in crisis.”
Tengku Razaleigh said that while the prime minister had made what he called “helpful gestures” towards freeing up the economy and pursuing multiracial policies, Malaysia was still in need of fundamental reform.
He urged an overhaul of the political system to rule out racially exclusive parties from directly contesting elections; a restoration of the independence of the judiciary and the media; and an all-out war against graft.Malaysia is in need of fundamental reform — Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah
JAN 7 — Thank you for the honour of addressing you today.
The centre of gravity of global economic activity has been moving eastwards towards Asia for quite some time now. The present global financial crisis has accelerated that process.
Asian economies, led by China, seek to spur domestic demand and increase intra-regional trade. As the global appetite for treasuries and US equities decreases, it is likely that large flows of risk capital will start moving to emerging markets again over the next six months. The main destinations will be India and China, but the countries of Southeast Asia are also set to benefit from these flows of global capital to the extent that they have an economic story to tell. The two top performers are going to be Indonesia and Vietnam. Indonesia, the new “i” in BRIIC, has a market-size, natural resources and liberalisation story while Vietnam has a large and industrious labour force that is skilling upwards rapidly. The Philippines and Thailand, despite political worries, remain relevant for their large domestic markets while Singapore, as the financial hub of the region, benefits from any increase in regional economic activity. This year also sees the full implementation of AFTA and the signing of more regional FTAs. We can be cautiously optimistic about the basis for growth in trade and investment.
I mentioned the major Asean countries but not Malaysia in my list of investment destinations. That is because Malaysia has fallen off the map for much foreign investment. With neither the cost and scale advantages of Vietnam and Indonesia nor the advanced capabilities of Singapore, Malaysia is firmly caught in a middle-income trap and appears to have fallen off the radar screen of foreign investors. It might seem puzzling that this country, sitting at the heart of Southeast Asia, blessed with extraordinary natural, cultural and human capital, and once a beacon in the developing world, has become irrelevant.
I want to discuss how this happened, and reflect on what this story might teach about larger issues of common concern. Other members of Asean might be concerned that a country that was once at the forefront in spearheading regional initiatives is at a crossroads over its own future.
The general election of March 2008 was a watershed in Malaysian politics. The ruling Barisan Nasional coalition lost its accustomed two-thirds majority in the Parliament, and lost five states to the opposition, including the economic backbone states of Selangor, Perak and Penang. Compared to the ebb and flow of power in other parliamentary democracies, you might not find this a remarkable development. Against the backdrop of Malaysia’s political history, however, the entire political landscape had changed overnight. Gone was the invincibility of Umno, the Malay-based party that has dominated Malaysian politics since independence. The political credibility of Umno/BN had been more than just a set of racially-based political parties. Over its decades of ascendancy, history had been re-written, mythology created, and the party abolished and reinvented to reinforce the necessity and inevitability of a government led by Umno.
The formula of communal power-sharing that the Barisan Nasional and its predecessor were built on had started life as a political accommodation, a nation-building compromise, a way-station on the road to a fuller union of our citizens. Fifty years later it had ossified into the appearance of an eternal racial contract, a model replicated at every level of national life. The election results plunged this model, and the regime built upon it, into crisis.
The people are often ahead of their government. They are interested in more things than identity politics. Unable to respond to the reality that the BN formula is broken and the people want more than ethno-religious politics, the ruling party appears to be reacting by digging itself deeper into narrow racial causes with no future in them. This desperate response is self-defeating in a cumulative way. As Umno is rejected by the voters, party members pursue racial issues more stridently. They think this will shore up their “base”. They are mistaken about the nature of that base. As they do so, they become more extreme and out of touch with ordinary voters of every race and religion whose major concerns are not racial or religious identity but matters such as corruption, security, the economy and education.
Umno’s position in the present controversy over the use of the term “Allah” by non-Muslims is an example. In a milestone moment, PAS, the Islamic party, is holding onto the more plural and moderate position while Umno is digging itself into an intolerant hardline position that has no parallel that I know of in the Muslim world. Umno is fanning communal sentiment, and the government it leads is taking up policy lines based on “sensitivities” rather than principle. The issue appears to be more about racial sentiment than religious, let alone constitutional principles.
In a complex multiracial society a party and a government whose primary response to a public issue is sunk in the elastic goo of “sensitivities” rather than founded on principle, drawn from sentiment rather than from the Constitution, is already short of leadership and moral fibre. Public life is about behaving and choosing on principle rather than sentiment. Islam, in particular, demands that our actions be guided by an absolute commitment to justice for all rather than by looking inward at vague “sensitivities” of particular groups, however politically significant. It is about doing what is right rather than protecting arbitrary feelings. If feelings diverge from what is right and just, then it’s time to show some leadership.
“Sensitivities” is the favoured resort of the gutter politician. With it he raises a mob, fans its resentment and helps it discover a growing list of other sensitivities. This is a road to ruin. A nation is made up of citizens bound by a shared conception of justice and not of mobs extracting satisfaction for politicised emotional states.
As a mark of our decline, at some point in our recent history the government itself began to speak the language of sensitivities. In the controversy over whether Christians are allowed to use the term “Allah” the government talks about managing sentiment when it should be talking about what is the right thing to do. This is what government sounds like when a political system and its leadership have come unstuck from the rule of law. It goes from issue to issue, hostage to the brinksmanship of sensitivities. Small matters threaten to erupt into racial conflict. The government of a multiracial society that cannot rise above sentiment is clearly too weak or too self-interested to hold the country together. It has lost credibility and legitimacy. The regime is in crisis.
The deterioration of our political order did not happen overnight or in isolation. It is part of a more general pattern of the decline of democracy and the rule of law in many newer democracies. Many post-colonial societies that began with democratic institutions saw democracy collapse afterwards into dictatorship. I can think of Nigeria, Pakistan and Kenya, for example. What has not been said is that underneath the appearance of continuity, and over two decades, Malaysia has quietly undergone the same process. There has been, beneath the surface, a decisive rupture with the federal, constitutional and democratic system upon which we were founded, and which alone confers legitimacy. What replaced it was an authoritarianism based on personality. Policy was set according to personal whims of the leader, which is to say that in areas such as the economy and foreign affairs, the country was run according to the personal enthusiasms and pet peeves of individual leaders.
Power was consolidated and constitutional government turned back. The result was a recession to authoritarianism and the centralisation of power, abetted by the corruption of the ruling party. The ideology of the ruling party, which had combined Malay nationalism with an overriding national concern, was vulgarised into an easily manipulated politics of group resentment.
Umno started in 1946 as a grassroots-based party that commanded the idealism of my generation. After 1987 it was transformed into a top-down patronage machine. Party membership became a ticket to personal gain. The party attracted opportunists and ne’er do wells while good people stayed away in droves. For any organisation this is a death spiral.
The challenge of Umno and of Malaysia today is not simply reform but restoration, not simply democratisation but re-democratisation. This is because we are not building from scratch but trying to recover from the decline of once-excellent core institutions.
There are regional implications to Malaysia’s crisis. The formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 precipitated a regional conflict to which, in part, the formation of Asean in 1967 was meant to be a solution. Now in a clear sign of the erosion of the rule of law, agreements that structured state-federal relations over matters such as the distribution of the petroleum revenue are casually ignored. Malaysia is a federation of sovereign entities, but one of the consequences of authoritarianism has been that it has come to be run habitually as a unitary state. We have to learn again how to be a federation.
Let me try to draw some conclusions:
Shortcuts in governance may appear to work for awhile, but they wreak long-term havoc on the institutional capability of a nation. Short-term boosts to the economy are difficult to evaluate when 40 per cent of the national budget come from a single source which does not report financial details either to the public or to Parliament.
What is clear is that there is no secure basis for long-term growth without a return to strong institutions, transparency and good government. The challenges of economic development, nation-building and institutional integrity are linked, more so in a complex country like Malaysia.
The success of Asean collaborative measures depends on the core countries taking a lead, and it is in everyone’s interest that these countries have strong democratic institutions and the rule of law. When countries lack good governance and transparency, domestic economies falter, domestic politics goes from crisis to crisis, and the country turns inwards and away from engaging constructively with the real world and with their neighbours.
The economic success of Asean economies up to the Nineties was based in part on the superiority of their institutional frameworks to those of Eastern Europe and South America. In the early days, Malaysia and Singapore played leading roles in Asean. Of late, Malaysia’s role has diminished, while that of Indonesia has grown. It is no accident that this is the result of successful reform and democratisation in Indonesia and the failure so far of any such process in Malaysia. Over the longer term, reform and democratisation must go hand in hand for there to be sustained economic development.
The present Prime Minister has made some helpful gestures towards liberalising the economy and pursuing more multiracial policies. These initiatives, however, must do more than skim the surface of what must be done. Malaysia is in need of fundamental reform. The reforms we need include, at minimum:
a. An overhaul of the party system which rules out racially exclusive parties from facing directly contesting elections. This will inaugurate a new era of post-racial politics.
b. The restoration of the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the media.
c. An all-out war on corruption, the root of all the evils in nation-building and economic development.
The greater economic collaboration we aspire to in Asean requires that we pay attention to the internal conditions in each country that make it possible. We need to place the promotion of governance and institutional reform on the Asean agenda. I hope this is a matter you see fit to take up.
This was the speech delivered by Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah at the ISEAS Regional Outlook Forum 2010 at the Shangri-la Hotel, Singapore on Jan 7.
He urged an overhaul of the political system to rule out racially exclusive parties from directly contesting elections; a restoration of the independence of the judiciary and the media; and an all-out war against graft.
Non-Muslims calling the Creator ‘Allah’ — IslamToday
JAN 7 — The name “Allah” is the Arabic word that refers to the one true God who created the heavens and the Earth — the God of all the Prophets from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Jesus to Muhammad (peace be upon them all).
The word Allah comes from the Arabic word “ilâh” meaning “deity, god, divine being” combined with the definite article “al”. Put together, they make “al-Ilâh” or literally “the God” which is then elided together as “Allah”.
Essentially, “Allah” is the literal Arabic equivalent to the English word “God” with a capital “G” while the Arabic word “ilâh” is the literal equivalent of the English word “god” with a lower-case “g”.
The Quran uses the name Allah consistently when referring to the message of all of the prophets and to the various beliefs of all of the people.
Even when the Quran quotes people of other religions saying false things about the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, the word Allah is used.
We have, for example, where certain Jews are quoted as saying: “And the Jews say: ‘The hand of Allah is tied up!’ Their hands shall be shackled, and may they be cursed for what they say. Nay, both His hands are spread out, He bestows as He pleases.” [Surah al-Ma’idah: 64]
We have the Christian doctrine of the trinity conveyed in the following verse: “They surely disbelieve who say: ‘Lo! Allah is the third of three’ when there is no god but the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.” [Surah al-Ma’idah: 73]
We also have in the Quran: “And the Jews say: ‘Ezra is the son of Allah’, and the Christians say: ‘The Messiah is the son of Allah’.” [Surah al-Tawbah: 30]
These verses are in Arabic and use the Arabic name Allah. The fact that the Quran does not shy away from using this word even when it speaks about the falsehood of the people of unbelief shows that the name “Allah” is truly universal, and can be used by anyone to refer to the true Creator of the heavens and the Earth.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) always referred to God as Allah when he discussed the beliefs of the Jews and Christians with him. They did so as well.
We have the challenge between the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to the Christians of Najran about their false belief in the divinity of Christ. The Arabs of Najran were Arab and were certainly speaking Arabic.
We read in the Quran where Allah commands His Messenger:”If any one disputes in this matter with thee, now after (full) knowledge hath come to thee, Say: Come! Let us gather together, our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves: then let us earnestly pray. And invoke the curse of Allah on those who lie.” [Surah Ãl-`Imran: 61]
The people of Arabia all referred to the Creator of the heavens and the Earth as “Allah”, whether they were Jews, Christians, or pagans. This is the reason why, in pre-Islamic times, many people of all three faiths already carried the name `Abd Allah.
They included the Prophet’s father `Abd Allah b. `Abd al-Muttalib who died before the Prophet (peace be upon him) was born, as well as the Prophet’s cousin `Abd Allah b. Abi Umayyah who only accepted Islam shortly before the conquest of Mecca.
They included the prominent Jewish rabbi of Madinah, `Abd Allah b. Salam, who became one of the most eminent of the Prophet’s Companions. Of course, he had been given the name `Abd Allah by his Jewish family long before Islam.
The measures that have recently been taken in some countries to bar non-Muslims from referring to God as “Allah” in their religious publications are quite unfortunate. The publications is question are ones written in languages where the name used for the Creator of the heavens and the Earth is the name “Allah”.
The purpose behind these restrictive measures is the fear that those publications will confuse Muslims who speak those languages and who might read those publications. Be that as it may, the confusion on a global scale which is being caused by the restriction is far worse.
Islamic workers who try convey the message of Islam to Jews and Christians have been struggling against the widely held belief idea that the god of the Muslims is some exotic deity other than the one who sent Abraham, Moses, and Jesus (peace be upon them all). It has been a long and uphill effort. These recent measures in some countries to ban non-Muslims form using the name Allah have resulted in confirming and entrenching those false suspicions among non-Muslims.
It is the duty of Muslims today to redouble their efforts to teach the people of the world that there is only one true God who created the heavens and the Earth; that all of the prophets and messengers were sent by Him with the same essential teaching: to worship the Creator alone and not set up partners with Him; that Allah is the God of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus — and Muhammad (peace be upon them all).
And Allah knows best. — IslamToday
* Prepared by the Research Committee of IslamToday
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