Gwynne Dyer: In the Name of Allah
In the late 1980s, when I was in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, a friend suggested that I drive out into the desert near Jubail to see the oldest extant Christian church in the world.
And there it was, surrounded by a chain-link fence to keep casual visitors and foreign archaeologists out. Experts who saw the site before it was closed said that the church was built by Nestorian Christians, and was probably used from the 4th to the 9th century.
Its existence embarrassed the Saudi government, which prefers to believe that Arabia went straight from paganism to Islam.
But it confirmed the assumption of most historians that Christianity was flourishing on the Arabian Peninsula in the centuries before the rise of Islam. So what did these Arabic-speaking Christians call God? Allah, of course.
I mention this because recently the Malaysian High Court struck down a three-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah when they speak of God in the Malay language.
The court's decision was followed by firebomb attacks on three Christian churches in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night, and on Friday protesters at mosques in Kuala Lumpur carried placards reading ``Allah is only for us.''...
Malaysia is an ethnic time-bomb that has turned itself into a peaceful and prosperous country by a huge effort of will. The original population was mostly Malay, but under British rule huge numbers of Indian and Chinese immigrants were imported to work the mines and plantations.
By independence, Malays were only 60 percent of the population, and much poorer than the more recent arrivals. They resented the past, the present and the probable future.
After several bouts of savage anti-Chinese and anti-Indian rioting, the country arrived at its current, highly successful compromise.
The Malays dominate politics, but the Chinese and the Indians thrive in trade and commerce ― and most people understand that they are ultimately in the same boat, which is called Malaysia....
Read entire article at Korea Times
And there it was, surrounded by a chain-link fence to keep casual visitors and foreign archaeologists out. Experts who saw the site before it was closed said that the church was built by Nestorian Christians, and was probably used from the 4th to the 9th century.
Its existence embarrassed the Saudi government, which prefers to believe that Arabia went straight from paganism to Islam.
But it confirmed the assumption of most historians that Christianity was flourishing on the Arabian Peninsula in the centuries before the rise of Islam. So what did these Arabic-speaking Christians call God? Allah, of course.
I mention this because recently the Malaysian High Court struck down a three-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah when they speak of God in the Malay language.
The court's decision was followed by firebomb attacks on three Christian churches in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night, and on Friday protesters at mosques in Kuala Lumpur carried placards reading ``Allah is only for us.''...
Malaysia is an ethnic time-bomb that has turned itself into a peaceful and prosperous country by a huge effort of will. The original population was mostly Malay, but under British rule huge numbers of Indian and Chinese immigrants were imported to work the mines and plantations.
By independence, Malays were only 60 percent of the population, and much poorer than the more recent arrivals. They resented the past, the present and the probable future.
After several bouts of savage anti-Chinese and anti-Indian rioting, the country arrived at its current, highly successful compromise.
The Malays dominate politics, but the Chinese and the Indians thrive in trade and commerce ― and most people understand that they are ultimately in the same boat, which is called Malaysia....