Why are we fighting over a word to refer to Divinity that historically have been used by Arabs of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish faith to describe God? A simple research on the internet will tell you this.
The word Allah does not belong exclusively to Malaysian Muslims, and this is a fact of today and the past backed by evidence. Go to the middle east and ask. It is the West that has assigned Allah to be the word used by Muslims. Don't be a Western bodek but understand the reality of diversity in the Arab world in which the word Allah came to be.
This is from Wikipedia, but check out their source from the Encyclopædia Britannica,and the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa.
Allah is the standard Arabic word for God.[1] 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".[1][2][3] The term was also used by pagan Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia.[4]
The concepts associated with the term Allah (as a deity) differ among the traditions. In pre-Islamic Arabia amongst pagan Arabs, Allah was not considered the sole divinity, having associates and companions, sons and daughters - a concept which Islam thoroughly and resolutely abrogated. In Islam, the name Allah is the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name. All other divine names are believed to refer back to Allah.[5] Allah is unique, the only Deity, creator of the universe and omnipotent.[1][2] Arab Christians today use terms such as Allāh al-ʼAb ( الله الأب, "God the Father") to distinguish their usage from Muslim usage.[6] There are both similarities and differences between the concept of God as portrayed in the Qur'an and the Hebrew Bible.[7]
Friday, January 08, 2010
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