Allah: What's in a name?

How does God which is referred to by Christians to mean the Father, the son and the holy spirit, i.e. the trinity akin to the God which the Holy Quran names overtly, al-ahad, the One and Only, the Eternal, the Absolute, who begets not nor is It begotten? (See the Holy Quran Surah 112). The Malay word for God is NOT ALLAH. Why is the word Tuhan not sufficient to describe the Creator? Where in the Bible was ALLAH ever used? These are fundamental questions that need to guide our inter-religious discussion on this matter of the use of the proper name Allah if we are to solve this fundamental religious issue.

Just because something has been going on for decades and beyond does not justify it to be correct. Perhaps sheer ignorance of the matter has allowed it to be used thus far. That does not mean that with knowledge the current generation continues to act jahil. God can defend itself sufficiently; The Almighty does not need anyone to defend Its majesty and rightful ownership of life. What the believers in Allah need to do is not to commit shirik, which is the worse act of defilement of Faith a believer can commit in which al-ahad, Allah, is allowed to be associated with any other entity.

This is what Muslims are affected by, which unfortunately is not understood by the non-Muslims. For to them, perhaps, God can beget a son and descend upon the earth and live among mortals, only to die on the cross. But the minute a Muslim allows this belief to be associated with Allah subhanawataalla, we have just relinquished our Faith. As Allah says in Its own words: “Allah forgives not that partners should be set up with It; but It forgives anything else, to whom It pleases; to set up partners with Allah is to devise a sin most heinous indeed” (Surah 4: 48).

In matters of faith, I believe, one cannot conform to the politics of multireligiousity at every juncture. This is not to say one should not allow for freedom of religion in a multicultural, multireligious nation such as Malaysia. In fact the opposite is true in Islam where as stated by Allah in Its own words in the Holy Quran, we are to accept the faith of the other as their chosen path as they are to accept our faith as our chosen path (See surah 109, Holy Quran). This is also not to say that Allah is a word sacred to only the Muslims. For as Allah says in the Holy Quran anyone who believes in the Almighty is a believer. Thus Allah can and should be used by any human on this earth for as long as it means the One and Only, al-ahad, with no association to any other entity. Until then, my suggestion is for us to use general nouns like God or Lord in English and Tuhan in Malay. In this case, the answer to the age old question, ‘what’s in a name’, would be everything.

Salam.