[Update 3 November 2014] Murphy wrote that “Allah/God” riff, by way of encouraging
Christian tolerance towards Muslims.
But these days, the bulk of the intolerance is on the other side, even
with respect to this linguistic issue:
KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — As the
students knelt in a circle at a Christian kindergarten near the shores of the
South China Sea, a 6-year-old girl in pigtails read out a chapter from a
children’s Bible: “Sepuluh hukum dari Allah” – God’s Ten Commandments.
Technically, she broke the law.
According to a series of government
orders and rulings by Malaysia’s Islamic councils, the word for God in the
Malay language – “Allah” – is reserved for Muslims. Malay-language bibles are
banned everywhere except inside churches. State regulations ban a list of
words, including Allah, in any non-Muslim context.
Malaysia, with its collage of
ethnic groups and religions, has a long history of tensions over issues ranging
from dietary differences to the economic preferences enshrined in Malaysian law
for the Malay Muslim majority.
Zainah Anwar, the founder of
Sisters in Islam, a women’s rights group, describes a “headlong descent into a
puritanical, extremist, intolerant brand of Islam in this country.”
“Malaysia’s moderate Islam is only
touted for Western consumption.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/world/asia/in-malaysia-allah-is-reserved-for-muslims-only.html?_r=0
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