Kadayan Journal

Word Allah-again?

Before I start writing again on this issue, I repoduce what others and I earlier wrote in this blog, have a go first… 

By Amde Sidik

Let me share my experience with a group of people who are not permitted to use word Allah in their book of prayer or prayer book.  

Until a few days ago it has been a yo-yo kind of decision by the Home Minister with regard to the law on the issue. Now law is back to square one, from allowing with condition to not allowing at all until court decides otherwise. 

I’m not arguing about the legality of it since the case is pending for judicial review, I’m merely talking about the people, who among them, I knew for a long time now. 

The people that I’m talking about are the Lundayeh from Sabah, and the Lunbawang from Sarawak; the two are actually of the same ethnic, but called in two different names in these two different regions. I don’t mention other ethnics here, which share the same predicament. 

The Lundayeh, aren’t permitted to use word Allah in their prayer book because they are Christian, if they are allowed to use word Allah it’s going to confuse the Muslims. That’s the version of the reason given by the Home Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Syed Hamid Albar 

The Lundayeh people are the followers of Sidang Injil Borneo-SIB, a relatively new group who professed a Christian religion in Sabah and Sarawak, started by Evangelical Mission, earlier called The Borneo Evangelical Mission-BEM. 

Hudson Southwell pioneered the mission with his two friends from Melbourne, Australia who landed in kuching from Singapore in 1928. Met Rajah Brooke –Sarawak Rajah, and in that same year he was given permission to establish this mission…

See the original article here…

For those who haven’t read this simple and  interesting article on the outlook of Muslim do so, I reproduce below which I received from a friend via my email…

View of a Syrian Muslim

 By Dr Faisal Al Qasim, Special to Gulf News

There is no doubting the fact thatArabs and Muslims are sadly the most regressive people in the world, according to the Human Development Reports supervised by renowned Muslim and Arab scholars, and released by the UN and other similar reports. In other words, the term ‘Muslim’ has been linked, in the minds of the people of the world, with violence, terrorism, anarchy, chaos, disturbances, famine, poverty and backwardness. There are of course certain exceptions to this rule, but not many.
 
Even Pakistan , a nuclear power, is at risk of becoming a failed state, due to poverty, corruption, internal fighting and political mismanagement. And when it comes to Turkey, seen as an exception in the Muslim world, the secularists there consider themselves closer to the West than to the Muslim world. They also ascribe the progress achieved by their country in many fields to a secular approach, rather than the influence of Islam.. I have heard top Turkish scholars, thinkers and politicians say that they prefer to be at the rearguard of the Western world than at the vanguard of the Muslim world.  It goes without saying that some Arab countries exist in a less developed state politically, let alone scientifically or technologically.
 
Why are those who are supposed to be ‘the best of all peoples’, as revealed in the Quran, lagging behind? Why are the supposedly infidel people of the world making great progress in various fields, while the ‘faithful’ are lagging behind everybody else?
 
Ironically enough, a huge percentage of the Chinese people, whose number is approaching 1.5 billion, are atheists. But these non-believers have achieved the highest development rate the world over - it reached 13 per cent at one stage. Add to this the fact that these atheists have ‘invaded’ almost every house in the world with their products. A high-ranking Chinese official once bragged that, “It is China and not the United States of America that is invading the world”. He challenged the Americans to get their products into a quarter of the houses entered by Chinese products. The official also bragged that the Chinese have ‘invaded’ the US itself.  “Aren’t the American flags fluttering over the White House made in China ?” he asked.
 
Experts predict that, in the near future, half of the products that will be sold in the world will be made by the Chinese. Even the Ramadan lambs that are slaughtered by Muslims in Cairo and other Muslim and Arab countries are raised in China . The prayer mats used by faithful Muslims the world over are made by Chinese non-believers, who only believe in doing their jobs in a very sincere and faithful manner. It goes without saying that all the little presents, such as rosaries and Islamic handicrafts, that the pilgrims take home with them after the pilgrimage season are made in China .
 
It is true that a Muslim country such as Malaysia has made great progress technologically, but some argue that were it not for the Chinese minority in that country, the Malaysians would not have been able to achieve what they have.
 
And if we consider the second-most progressive country in the world, India , we find that the majority of the people there revere cows. But that has not prevented them from competing with America in the computer industry, to the extent that the famous American writer Thomas Friedman fears that Silicon Valley will one day relocate to India .
 
In other words, the most progressive people in the world are non-believers by Islamic standards whereas we, Muslims, ironically waste most of our time classifying the peoples of the world into believers and non-believers, and fighting among ourselves over who is more ‘faithful’.
 
I wish we spent more time learning from the non-believers, who produce most of the products we buy. If we had, we would
probably be less regressive.
 
This is by no means a call for atheism - God forbid - but a suggestion that we better ourselves, as our great religion instructs us to do.  The great Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) called upon us to seek knowledge - even in China
 
 
Dr. Faisal Al Qasim, 
a Syrian journalist based in Doha.