Dear Allah Subhanawataala
My name is satD (but you know the real person before I was even born), I am one of your
hamba living in a country called Malaysia created by a bunch of people back in 1957. This country has Islam as its official religion and guarantees religious freedom to others through its constitution. This country also specifically has a provision that protects Muslims against the propagation of other religion (
alhamdullilah to our founding fathers for insisting that into our constitution). The actual enforcement of such provision is to be gazetted into the individual state constitution as the individual states Jabatan Agama Islam will be the agent to ensure that the provision under the Federal Constitution are adhered to.
I am saddened with the current on-goings on the need of using your name in the religious documents of other faith. It seems that the overall discussion have been specifically focused on the use of your name in Bahasa Malaysia which is our national language. Promoters of the idea have been focusing on the fact that your name have been used since 1800's. They insist on the use specifically for their Bahasa Malaysia documents ONLY and not in our Second Language which is English.
In the past few weeks, the cyberspace have been debating this issue from the linguistic perspective of using your name but I have always wondered on a few things that I think only you would know.
1. If Islam came to our shores prior to Christianity, would the locals of our land then would have been addressing you the Supreme Being by Allah Subhanahuwataala
2. Could the person who was tasked to propagate the other religion;
specifically Christianity would have arrived circa 1600's after the rise of Melaka probably have brought with him a Bible
NOT in the Native Language of the locals of our land.
3. In order to propagate his religion, he/she would need to translate the bible into the Native Language for ease of dissemination.
4. Could the process of translation involves the preacher going around asking the locals who and what do you call your god? and given the fact that the majority of the people being muslims would have answered the one and only Allah Subhanahuwataala
5. Knowing this fact the preacher then conveniently substituted the word God (in his original document) with your name even though
every other Bible in the world does not use your name except for those who share the same root language with arabic, so that he could easily achieve his task and also make future efforts of propagating Christianity to the locals a breeze this is in consideration of the fact that
God is Tuhan in our languageI have written about this before to inquire of the need to use your name and one soul came to provide a counter argument by asking me to speculate on the number of Malays converts.....does it matter if the number is 100,000 or just 1 person....if the Federal and State Constitution already has provision to protect the Malay Muslims from any form of elements that may lead to conversions........
What if for the sake of settling this issue once and for all, the Malaysian Government ALLOW the production, use and distribution of Bahasa Malaysia Bibles WITHOUT the use of ALLAH as a term of reference to God......Plus this is the time of the INTERNET ANYONE CAN DOWNLOAD A ONLINE COPY OF THE MALAY BIBLE into their home without the religious authority knowing. Regulations and Enforcement must keep up with the evolution of technology, if regulation are enacted but is too costly to implement or impossible to monitor then the intended objective is not achieved.
Ya Allah Give us Guidance..........I am not someone who is against other religion nor want to stir up negative debates on this particular matter, I am for all Malaysian to live in harmony with one another and
have written about this matter before to raise the awarenessYa Allah Guide Us, Our Leaders and Policy makers to Make the Right Well Informed Choice for the Stability of Our Nation
Ameen.
