Muslims will be confused if “Allah” allowed in Bible, says Jakim in sermon

The Department of Islamic Development (Jakim) called on Muslims today to unite against any attempt to misuse the word "Allah" as it looked ahead to the Court of Appeal decision on Monday. The court will rule whether the Catholic weekly newspaper, the Herald, can use the word in its Bahasa Malaysia section.

In its Friday sermon today, Jakim said, "It is expected of the followers of Islam to do their best to ensure the religion is protected from any attempt to insult or misuse the word.

"Any attempt to use the word Allah anywhere else other than the al-Quran will cause conflict in our faith. We reject their ideology of Trinity (God, the Son and the Holy Spirit)."

Jakim also questioned the necessity of using the word "Allah" in the Bible, whereby it said that its use would contradict the belief of Christians in the Trinity concept.

It added that if it was used in Christian bibles, it was bound to cause confusion among Muslims, who might be mistaken about the identity of "Allah" and as such it would destroy their faith.

"So it becomes the responsibility of the preacher to call on the Muslim community to defend the religion, for the sake of our family and our future generations, by rejecting any attempts to destroy our faith while embedding our love for "Allah" and his prophets.

"The responsibility and the power are in our hands to defend the sanctity of our religion. We also have to pray so that any attempts to destroy our faith is derailed by Allah. Defending our religion is expected of us," the sermon stated.

Jakim also urged Muslims to avoid propagating unlimited freedom, such as human rights, which was promoted by Western ideology as it was the work of the enemies of Islam that ran contrary to Islam.

The sermon added that allowing the ideologies of liberalism, religious pluralism and the championing of gay rights, lesbianism and same-sex marriages would lead to having a Muslim community that would be willing to sacrifice its faith.

This was dangerous as it was an attempt to influence Muslims using the human rights argument, it added.