'Allah' is not Malay translation for God

THEOLOGICAL TRANSLATION- This is the second part of a letter that was published yesterday

WHEREAS in Christianity, the word "Allah" is claimed and employed to be a translation of the English word for Yahweh or Elohim into Malay. Between the two, surely the party who does not have to translate the term has a greater right over the correct and proper use of the term, just as somebody who owns a car has greater right and priority over somebody who borrows that car.

Indeed, as elaborated by Professor Dr Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, the name "Allah" came into the Malay world with the coming of Islam, therefore, it does not have any other meaning apart from the meaning that was brought by and associated with Islam.

It follows that the often-repeated argument that Christians should be permitted to use the name "Allah" because it has long been used, and continues to be used, by non-Muslims in the Middle East, for example Christian Arabs, overlooks the historical fact that it was Islam that first introduced the word to the religious and intellectual consciousness of the peoples in the Malay world, especially Muslims.

Owing to the centrality of the name Allah in Islam -- both as a religion and a civilisation -- and the enormous significance attached to it, not only in terms of religious rituals, but also in terms of the Islamic perspectives upon the nature of existence, knowledge, happiness and virtue, Muslims down the ages who are profoundly aware of its weight and import are opposed to any attempts to attribute deviant meanings to the name Allah.

They have strived instead to generate new terms that can accommodate the intended and superficially similar, but fundamentally different meanings as required by new circumstances without compromising the established worldview as projected by key Islamic terms and concepts.

Now, if there are issues with the original translations, there is no reason to think that the word "Yahweh" is unsuitable compared with the word "Allah".

It is conceivable to argue that using the word "Tuhan" to refer to El or Elohim and the word Yahweh to refer to YHWH would be a much more faithful rendering in Malay of the original meaning contained in the Old Testament, rather than employing the word "Allah".

If it is questions of theology we are concerned with, then these can be averted by simply introducing the word "Yahweh" into the Malay vocabulary and to then assigning it a specific meaning. This kind of "side-stepping" is not necessarily new in the Christian tradition.

One is reminded of how the early Christians who had to wrestle theologically with Muslims in Arabic faced a much more difficult task as the meaning of the terms used are basically controlled by Muslims.

But they managed to render the right words with the right meanings in Arabic despite the problems, even going so far as to make Arabic a language for Christian prayer, but without undermining and corrupting the established meaning of key terms and concepts within the "semantic field" of Arabic, and ultimately the world view of Islam.

If it is further argued that YHWH is not a Malay word, then one can argue that the word "ekaristi" (eucharist) is also not in the Malay language originally, but was introduced later.

Furthermore, an addition of another word is not impractical as it is often trumpeted to be as this will simply involve substituting the words "Allah" and "Tuhan" in the translation of the Bible with the correctly translated word, "Yahweh" without incurring much theological hair-splitting.

If tradition is cited, it is worth noting that in Christianity, certain things, such as the list of popes going back to St Peter given in the Annuario Pontificio (editor's note -- the annual directory of the Holy See listing all the popes to date and all officials of the Holy See's departments) and the Donation of Constantine (editor's note -- a purported 8th century Roman imperial decree by which the emperor Constantine I supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the Western part of the Roman empire to the Pope), have not withstood critical scrutiny, if not proven to be false, especially by Protestants.

More recently, even the Septuagint story has been put under critical historical scrutiny. Therefore, the charge that changes cannot be made due to the inertia of tradition is self-defeating, especially if what is being proposed as changes are in fact corrections.

To recapitulate, our main arguments are as follows:

THIS entire case hinges on the fact that Christians and other non-Muslims have incorrectly conceived the word "Allah" to be a Malay translation of the name of God in Islam, when in fact it is not. It is not a translation of some other word into Malay but the name represents how God choose to disclose Himself to us as He intended it, in His Wisdom and Mercy;

THERE seems to be a translational error in the past if indeed the word "Elohim" or "El" was rendered into Allah and the word YHWH into "Tuhan". If this is true, then the refusal to correct this error by substituting the incorrectly translated word with the correct translation is puzzling;

EVEN if the ordering is wrong, that is that "Elohim" or "El" is the specific name and, therefore, is translated into Allah, while YHWH is translated into "Tuhan", there is no reason to think that we cannot accommodate the words Elohim or El into the Malay language as a specific noun; and,

A VALID reason to use the word "Allah" as opposed to YHWH would have to do with theology. Therefore, we shall need to assess the strength of the claim that the word "Elohim" or "El" must necessarily be translated into "Allah" on theological grounds.

We believe this to be reasonable in the light of claims by certain Christian groups, as well as neutral enough to provide common ground for an agreement which does not offend both parties.

However, if we wish to delve deeper into questions of theology and translations, we must also include discussions on linguistics, in theories such as the semantic field of languages.

This is crucial as we Muslims do not believe in a purely pragmatic view of languages, as we believe that Arabic is a language chosen by God to convey His Uncreated Word through Prophet Muhammad.

The writers are research fellows at Himpunan Keilmuan Muslim, Bangi, Selangor

- New Straits Times