January 27, 2014 – Islam In Indonesia

AFP
KUALA LUMPUR

Malaysian churches defiantly continued to use the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God in today’s services despite the Muslim-majority country’s leader saying they must obey rules against it.

A church in Malaysia

Malay-speaking Christians prayed and sang hymns using the Arabic word, a practice they have observed for hundreds of years but which has sparked an increasingly tense row in the Southeast Asian nation.

“They all contain the word ‘Allah’,” a pastor at a church near the capital Kuala Lumpur said of the songs sung by the church.

“(The Malay-language bible) contains the word ‘Allah’. When we preach we have to read the text. It’s a really difficult situation,” he added, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the passions surrounding the issue.

Najib Razak

Under pressure from Muslim conservatives, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said on Friday that Malaysian Christians must heed rules forbidding them from using the word.

Islamist ethnic Malays say the word is exclusive to Islam and must not be used by the country’s non-Muslim minorities. Muslim ethnic Malays make up more than 60 per cent of the diverse country’s 28 million people.

Malaysia has sizeable ethnic Chinese, Indian and other communities. It has about 2.6 million Christians.

Church leaders have vowed not to back down.

Rev. Hermen Shastri

“The Christians in Malaysia have no choice but to use the Malay-language bibles. To say they cannot use these bibles, it means saying ‘you are not allowed to worship in the language that you want,’” Rev. Hermen Shastri, general secretary of the Council of Churches of Malaysia, told AFP.

The government in 2007 ordered a Malaysian Catholic weekly newspaper to cease use of the word, arguing that printing it in Christian literature could confuse Muslims and entice them to convert, which is illegal for Muslims in Malaysia.

“Allah” also is used by Malay Muslims to refer to The Creator.

The newspaper has launched a long-running court challenge, angering Muslim conservatives.

Dr Yusri Mohamad

“Why insist? They have an option. They don’t really have to use ‘Allah’ to worship,” said Yusri Mohamad, chairman of Muslim rights group Pembela.

“This is unnecessary provocation… This is not healthy for Malaysia.”

Muslim conservatives have suggested Christians use other Malay words, such as “Tuhan”, to refer to God.

Malaysia has avoided overt religious conflict for decades and is generally seen as a moderate Muslim country.

But non-Muslims complain of what they see as growing intolerance by increasingly influential Islamic Malay conservatives.

The Malaysian Catholic church argues that “Allah” has been used by Christians in the country for hundreds of years and that the word predates the founding of Islam.

Tensions sparked by the issue triggered a spate of attacks in 2010 on places of worship, mostly churches.

http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/despite-ban-allah-rings-out-in-malaysian-churches

“Around the 15th century, predominately Muslim Chinese immigrants who came from Guangzhou and Fujian landed in the archipelago. They lived in Indonesia living as merchants, farm, and as a handyman .

Chinese Muslims in the archipelago is hailed from the original Chinese Muslim imigrants, and settled in the archipelago. There was also a convert to Islam because Chinese interaction with the local population were Muslims.

The arrival of Chinese Muslim immigrants to the archipelago, before and at the time of the kingdoms in the archipelago, individually. At this time the Chinese Muslim immigrants spreading Islam indirectly.

Called indirectly because their purpose to come to the archipelago actually was to improve their economic life, not for presenting or preaching Islam.

However, as Muslims, they also indirectly influenced the behavior of people in the area, introducing Islam and worship in their daily acitivities.

Despite the arrival of ethnic Chinese Muslims not to preach, their presence has affected the development of the Islamic missionary.

One of them was the results of the process of assimilation, marriage with locals who then made them Muslims.

Some areas that served the purpose of the Chinese immigrant Muslims were Sambas, Lasem, Jakarta, Banten, Jepara, Tuban, Gresik, and Surabaya. We can still find traces of their purported relics of mosque and other buildings.

Chinese Muslims immigrant have been in Indonesia before the Portuguese and Dutch colonial nations came. Chinese immigrants in the 15th century came to live in Indonesia to find a livelihood, not to conquer the area or to exploit this country.

Their intention was different with the colonialists. The Portuguese and Dutch came to Indonesia to discover the colony and thus spread the Christian religion .

Chinese Muslim immigrants assimilated and lived with the natives, while the Dutch and Portuguese treated the natives in discriminatory way and under their hegemony.

In the Portuguese colonial era, Chinese Muslims were also oppressed like the natives. Even during the war against colonial, the population of Chinese Muslims also joined the fighters in each district to fight the invaders.

Among Chinese Muslims were also targets for genocide and political victims of the colonial’s divide and rule politics.”