What is God to some is Allah to others. That is unless you live in a country like Malaysia, a country that is 60% Muslim. There is a problem with reconciling the religion of peace with firebombing churches.
There was a court case over the use of the word Allah, and in printing bibles in the local language where the word God was replaced with the word Allah. Both were banned in Malaysia. Although the court came down on the side of the Christians, lifting the ban on using the name Allah and using it in their bibles, ‘many Muslims’ are fanatically intolerant of it. Nine churches have been attacked since Friday, seven of those by firebomb.
The church caters mostly to Christians from eastern Sabah and Sarawak states, who worship in the Malay language and use the word “Allah” to describe God.
Many Muslims are angry about a Dec. 31 High Court decision overturning a government ban on Roman Catholics’ using “Allah” to refer to their God in the Malay-language edition of their main newspaper, the Herald.
The ruling also applies to the ban’s broader applications such as Malay-language Bibles, 10,000 copies of which were recently seized by authorities because they translated God as Allah. The government has appealed the verdict.
That the government is appealing the verdict is way more than ‘many Muslims.’ Seems to me that religious intolerance is institutional and built-in in Malaysia.
Makes one wonder where else such radicals exist. Maybe not our Secretary of Homeland Security, but normal-thinking people might. People not infected with Political Correctness like Janet Napolitano and the Associated Press.
For the AP to characterize this as racial tensions would be like saying that Muslims are like the Klu Klux Klan. As if that is better than calling it what it really is, religious-based terrorism.
