Critical Thoughts

In light of what has happened before, something worthy of noting and better than asking how much are dental implant prices:

A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.

Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word “Allah” while celebrating Mass.

Actually the Alkitab Bahasa Indonesia (Bible in Indonesian) uses the phrase “Tuhan Allah”, but I digress. Anyway, the issue of the word “Allah” is not exactly something new. The Arab Christians have been using the word Allah from Day One, since that is the only word for “God” in Arabic.

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Frankly I don’t have any problems if those from the Abrahamic religions were to use the word “Allah” in their religious liturgy. Its not something which should be of a surprise, since the word Allah simply means “The God” in Arabic and it is used extensively in the Arabic Bible. Its not even a noun in the language, just a word to describe the God, the prefix al- being the definitive article and ilah meaning “god” in Arabic. As a side note, it should be noted that the word Elohim (which is the Hebrew synonym to the Arabic Allah) — the suffix -im being the definite article for eloh (god) — is used in the Hebrew translation of the Qur’an as well.

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