Is Allah for everyone?

There was a SAPA-AP report in the Cape Times of 04 January 2010, entitled “Malaysia awaits ruling on whether Allah is God to Muslims only”, which I found interesting. Apparently, the government of Malasia is set to challenge a High Court ruling that Christians have a constitutional right to use the word Allah to refer to God. The High Court ruling struck down a government ban on non-Muslims translating the word “God” as “Allah” in their literature. Mild protests apparently followed.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit, filed in 2007 by The Herald in its Malay language edition. The Herald is the Roman Catholic Church’s main publication in Malasia. The problem seems to be that some Islamic commentators agree with the government position that the word “Allah” is an Islamic word, which should be used exclusively by Muslims and that its use by other religions is misleading. Naturally, there are also other Islamic scholars, who say there would be no problem in the use of the word by non-Muslim people, seeing it, simply, as a translation, and nothing more.

Now, this raises some interesting questions. If the word is, in fact, nothing more than a simple translation of the word “God” into Arabic, then it seems to me that any kind of restriction on the use of the word is going to be difficult at best and nonsensical at worst. How would one control it?

Would one need to substitute another word in its place (pretty much as the Jews do, so as to protect the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH with other words and circumlocutions such as “Jehovah”, or “Elohim”?) My suspicion is that it is this sense of reverence which is some of the motivation behind the attempt to protect the word “Allah”.

On the other hand, it could be the view that any use of the word by non-Muslims, particularly in the context of Christian evangelism, is somehow a deliberate attempt to blur the distinctions between the two religions. I have no doubt whatsoever, in a strongly proselytizing environment, that this could well be the motivation. In which case, I suppose, there really can be no rules of engagement!

But the bigger question would be this: If only Muslims can use the word “Allah” because, somehow, that word is connected to Muslim people, what would be the relationship of “Allah” as an entity, to non-Muslims? Is there hidden in this view, the understanding that there is a different God, called “God” for non-Muslims, and “Allah” for Muslims? Because that would be extremely strange in a monotheistic environment.

Some time ago, my eldest son, aged 7, asked me whether the name of God was Allah. I said yes, it was. Then I had a moment’s thought. I said, “But Christians also call God...” I thought some more, and came up, ingeniously, with “God!” I wonder, now, was I wrong?

The Minaret, the Swiss and the question of tolerance

My memories of working on a pig farm, as a 19 year old, near a village called Chesierès in Switzerland are mostly pleasant. I needed to work on the pig farm, because I had started hitching around Europe with the princely sum of £50 in my pocket. The money really didn’t last long – even then, and as I got deliciously thinner and thinner, living on a diet of powdered soup and demi baguette, I needed to seriously consider my options. One of them was actual work – which hadn’t really crossed my mind previously.

So, I hitched to this very beautiful place, in the Alps and found work as a muck-raker on a pig farm. You get used to it after a while. You even get on a first name basis with some of the sows. The deal was that I didn’t actually get paid – that somehow got lost in translation – but I did get a place to stay and food.

The food was good – pasta in various forms with cheese, as I remember it. The place to stay was the barn, which stank of cat wee and had lots of straw in it. I noticed, fairly quickly, that I was not the only person working in this Swiss slave galley – there were students from all over the world. We were young. We were horny. We were reckless and we were happy.

And that was my experience of Switzerland, besides brief forays into to Basel and Geneva, which I simply could not afford – whatever I did! But even with that, I have a very clear picture in my head of what Switzerland looks like. It has very imposing, very protestant churches in Geneva, with nothing of any interest inside them. It includes red geranium-filled window-boxes and it includes shop windows filled with chocolates. And the picture does not have Minarets in it.

Now, I wonder – is that a good or a bad thing? A new found friend, who is actually an old school friend that I have recently re-found on Facebook (you know how this happens) lives in Israel. He is (how can I put this mildly?) anti-Islamic. I think, from the little I have read, it would be not untrue to say that he hates Islam with every fibre of his being. I would venture to say that it is likely that he hates everyone who doesn’t hate Islam! It is, as I say, something fairly strong.

But his religion is, and always has been, a non-proselytizing one. Judaism has never sought converts. That has been both its strength and its biggest weakness. Its strength, because it has maintained a kind of inner coherence and integrity through the ages – and a fairly strong ethical centre. But its weakness, because it has, to a large extent become focused on and confined to a tiny, disputed, piece of land. It has no room to breathe. Its members who live elsewhere have usually built fairly discrete Temples with architecture not dissimilar to that around them. Because of the ban on art, their presence (certainly amongst the Hasidim) is noticed largely because of their peculiar Eurocentric (and of a particular period to boot) dress and untamed sideburns. But they have always preferred to keep to themselves.

Islam and Christianity, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They have, in the past and for both of them also in the present, shown no hesitation in expansion. In Empire building. In rampant domination. Christianity has simply adopted prevailing culture where it has encountered a clash, baptised it and then usurped it. Where it met with other forms of resistance, it has shown no hesitation in killing and subjecting everything in its path until it held sway and established itself as primary. And the way in which it did that was by altering the skyline.

And Islam seems to have the same kind of appetite for cultural imperialism, though, I would argue, not quite as virulently as Christianity – yet.

The rapprochement which presently exists between Judaism and Christianity is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the Gospels themselves, and Matthew’s Gospel in particular – the Jews are, pretty much, the enemy. And it has taken many a century to get beyond the “Christ killer” instinct of the early church. And now, the tactical alliance between Zionism (as distinct from Judaism) and right-wing American Christianity (read American dominance in world politics) is much more than mutual respect for divergent views. It is fundamentally a political alliance.

So, I find myself wondering what the real basis for the recent government objection to a Minaret in Switzerland is. Is it cultural? Architectural? Or is there, somewhere in the back of Swiss consciousness, a memory of just how quickly things can change and how other world orders can easily come to dominance? The problem is not anywhere else, but in the proselytizing nature of the religions themselves. I think, like Chinese manufacturing, it is an unstoppable reality.

Demonizing the enemy

A Dutch parliamentarian by the name of Geert Wilders was recently refused entry to the United Kingdom, because of his particular stance against Islam. He produced recently a short film called “Fitna” which adopts a fairly extreme anti-Islam position.
The 15-minute film features disturbing images of terrorist acts superimposed over verses from the Qur’an, in order to paint Islam as a threat to Western society. After its release, the movie drew complaints from the European Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, as well as concern from the United States, which warned it could spark riots. Dutch authorities filed charges against Wilders last month, accusing him of inciting racial hatred in speeches and in the film.
Caroline Cox, a member of the British House of Lords who is not affiliated with a political party, invited Geert Wilders to screen his film at a private session in parliament, in order to “provoke discussion”.
A Home Office spokesperson defended the British Government’s decision to bar Wilders from entering the country in the following way - “The government opposes extremism in all its forms. It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country”.
The film,(which you can view on the internet) opens with the controversial caricature of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban shaped like a bomb, followed by translated (selected) portions of the Qur’an, taken entirely out of context (and often quoted selectively within the passage itself). The passages are interspersed with sickening images of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States, juxtaposed with audio from 911 calls made by the victims trapped inside the World Trade Center in New York.
The video includes images of other terror attacks; bloodied victims; beheadings of hostages; executions of women in hijab, the traditional full-body covering; and footage, with subtitles, of Islamic leaders preaching inflammatory sermons against Jews and Christians.
Wilbers’ views and motives for making the film are undoubtedly extreme. He claims, however that he does not hate Muslims, but rather, opposes the "Islamization" of the European continent. There are interviews with him saying such things as “Our culture is better than a retarded Islamic culture”. “Multi-cultural societies”, he says, “are a mistake”. “Multi-culturalism has brought all the problems and the people we allow here are nurtured in a pampered society”.
What is even more astonishing is the majority of the online responses to the various interviews he gives. They are mostly savage, racist, ignorant and violent. And mostly posted by Christians.
I must admit, I was taken in by the argument, at first. Freedom of speech is a precious thing and needs to be guarded jealously. But then I thought about it for a moment longer.

Here is a man, who, on the face of it, looks entirely liberal. He is not arguing that Muslims should be exterminated, but rather that Muslim culture cannot be allowed to encroach on Dutch culture to the point that it starts to overwhelm it, because of (in his estimation) its inherent aggressiveness. To make his argument, he collects together every horror image he can find in the world, which is in any way associated with Islam, and packages it in an entirely propagandistic way, and presents it, through a lack of commentary, as objective.

But it is not. It ignores everything that is good about Islam in the face of everything that is bad. It ignores everything that is bad and horrific and terrifying in Christianity in order to set up a completely weighted picture of Islam as a religion. It is deeply offensive and extraordinarily hurtful. Its argument is binary.

All I can say is, how happy I am to live in a country where Islam is respected in the same way as is Christianity. And the correct presumption of both is that their followers are not criminals and terrorists and murderers. And every day of my life – particularly here in Cape Town, I see evidence of how wise and how true our Constitution is on this point. We are all the better for it.

And I speak as a gay man, whose rights are fully protected, against Muslim extremes and against Christian.