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One God, Many Names
Does it matter what one calls God? Would he answer to Allah but not X, Yahweh but not Y, Brahman not Z? Would he be confused if Christians called him "Allah", Hindus "Yahweh" and Muslims "God"? Is he a linguistic chauvinist? Would he say: "Call me 'God' as in English, not Gott as in German; Theos as in Greek, not Deus as in Latin; Allah as in Arabic, not Alaha as in Aramaic or Syriac?"
These are, of course, inane questions. Idiotic humans might ask them; God, if he exists, cannot possibly abide such silly questions.
Neti, neti, the Buddha would say when pressed by over-eager disciples to describe the nature of ultimate reality - "not this, not this".
Jews are reminded of the utter incapacity of language to encompass God by the Tetragrammaton - the four Hebrew consonants (Yod Heh Vau Heh) designating God, usually transliterated as YHWH in English. So sacrosanct is the name of God, observant Jews do not vocalise the Tetragrammaton, preferring instead to refer indirectly to Yahweh as Adonai ("my Lord") or Elohim ("God") or by means of euphemisms such as hash-Shem (the "Name") or Shem Hameforash ("the ineffable Name").
Muslims are told by scripture that 'God has ninety-nine names" - among them "the King, the Holy One, the Perfect Peace, Granter of security, Giver of protection, the Omnipotent, the Overwhelming", and so on.
"In congregate, (these names) affirm God's supreme perfection and cultivate deeper understanding of his beauty and majesty, " writes Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a Muslim scholar, in an article aptly titled One God, Many Names. They also affirm that the transcendent cannot possibly be fully encompassed by language.
Mystical literature illustrates the point. Here is a list of some phrases that one scholar culled from 17th century Christian mystical writings describing the experience of God: "Inflaming transubstantiations; super-essential unions; abyssal liquefactions; deific confrications; meridian holocausts in a visceral and medullar penetrability."
The extravagance of these phrases illustrates how every attempt to describe religious experience has to be, of necessity, "a raid on the inarticulate," as the poet T.S. Elliot put it. If God is ineffable - and all the religions are agreed that he is - a degree of linguistic modesty ought to figure among the prime religious virtues.
It is a lesson the religious, of all faiths, are apt to forget. Consider, for instance, how Reverend Pat Robertson, the American evangelist, spoke one of the names of God. Speaking of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he said: The conflict is about "whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is supreme."
Almost every word in that statement is nonsense, Firstly, Hubal was a pre-Islamic pagan god that Prophet Muhammad rejected. Secondly, "Jehovah" is not a name that appears anywhere in the Jewish Bible. It is an English mistransliteration of the Jewish Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Most scholars now believe the Tetragrammaton is better vocalised in English as "Yahweh". And thirdly, "Allah", far from being un-Christian, is related to the word that Jesus Christ himself - who spoke Aramaic, let us not forget, not English, Greek or Latin - would have used to refer to God: Elah or Alah.
Which brings us to the nonsense uttered on the other side - by the Muslim Pat Robertsons of Malaysia. Christians, they have ruled, cannot use "Allah" to refer to God in Malay translations of the Bible. The word is unique to Islam, they insist. It would confuse Muslims - and presumably God too - if Christians used the same word. These assertions make no sense whatsoever - culturally, historically and linguistically.
A section of my family on my mother's side are Chitti Melakas, the Indian version of Baba Chinese. For as long as I remember, they have always referred to God, when speaking in Malay, as Tuan Allah or 'Lord God', though they are Hindus.
They are not the only ones. To this day, hundreds of thousands of Arab Christians call God "Allah". Arabic-speaking Jews do the same. There is no indication Arabic-speaking Muslims have been confused as a result.
Arab scholars and Imams would know what linguists have established beyond a shadow of doubt: The word for "God" in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, all Semitic languages, are so closely related as to be virtually indistinguishable. The Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - may have different conceptions of God, but etymologically-speaking, they all call God by the same name.
The Arabic Allah shares the same root as the Hebrew Elohim and the Aramaic Alaha. Elohim derives from eloh (Hebrew for "God"), Alaha is an emphatic form of alah (Aramaic for "God"), and Allah is linked to ilah (Arabic for "God").
"All three of these Semitic words for 'God' - eloh, alah and ilah - are etymologically equivalent," as Dr Abd-Allah notes. "The slight modifications between them reflect different pronunciations conforming to the historical pattern of morphological shifts in each tongue."
How would it be possible to say Christians cannot say "Allah" when Christ himself - who walked the face of the Earth six centuries before Prophet Muhammad did, and is accepted by Muslims as a prophet - would have said Alah, Elah or Alaha?
There are reasons why the Quran calls Jews and Christians ahl al-kitab - "People of the Book". They share the same religious texts as Muslims; they share similar revelations; and the Semitic languages they spoke are more closely linked than are Sanskrit, Latin, English and the other Indo-European languages.
There are two ways in which this linguistically meaningless argument in Malaysia may be resolved.
One, Malaysia's Islamic authorities might consider what word for "God" the Prophet would have used when speaking to his wife's cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Christian. For two years after he first received God's revelations, the Prophet spoke of his experiences to nobody other than his wife Khadija and her cousin.
Would he have told his Christian relative: No you can't say "Allah"; say "Tuan" or "God" or "Deus"?
If the Malaysian authorities can confirm this could not possibly have been the case, then the matter might be closed: All Christians, like the Prophet's relative, may be allowed to say "Allah".
But if the authorities still insist that what was admissable for the Prophet's relative should be inadmissable now, for whatever reason, then they might consider another option. Denied the right to use "Allah", Christian Malaysians may be allowed to go back to their linguistic roots, and use the Aramaic Alah or Alaha as Christ would have.
One letter "l" less or one syllable "a" more than "Allah" - that should be enough to prevent the impossible and non-existent confusion of Islam and Christianity in Malaysia.
janadas@sph.com.sg
Does it matter what one calls God? Would he answer to Allah but not X, Yahweh but not Y, Brahman not Z? Would he be confused if Christians called him "Allah", Hindus "Yahweh" and Muslims "God"? Is he a linguistic chauvinist? Would he say: "Call me 'God' as in English, not Gott as in German; Theos as in Greek, not Deus as in Latin; Allah as in Arabic, not Alaha as in Aramaic or Syriac?"
These are, of course, inane questions. Idiotic humans might ask them; God, if he exists, cannot possibly abide such silly questions.
Neti, neti, the Buddha would say when pressed by over-eager disciples to describe the nature of ultimate reality - "not this, not this".
Jews are reminded of the utter incapacity of language to encompass God by the Tetragrammaton - the four Hebrew consonants (Yod Heh Vau Heh) designating God, usually transliterated as YHWH in English. So sacrosanct is the name of God, observant Jews do not vocalise the Tetragrammaton, preferring instead to refer indirectly to Yahweh as Adonai ("my Lord") or Elohim ("God") or by means of euphemisms such as hash-Shem (the "Name") or Shem Hameforash ("the ineffable Name").
Muslims are told by scripture that 'God has ninety-nine names" - among them "the King, the Holy One, the Perfect Peace, Granter of security, Giver of protection, the Omnipotent, the Overwhelming", and so on.
"In congregate, (these names) affirm God's supreme perfection and cultivate deeper understanding of his beauty and majesty, " writes Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a Muslim scholar, in an article aptly titled One God, Many Names. They also affirm that the transcendent cannot possibly be fully encompassed by language.
Mystical literature illustrates the point. Here is a list of some phrases that one scholar culled from 17th century Christian mystical writings describing the experience of God: "Inflaming transubstantiations; super-essential unions; abyssal liquefactions; deific confrications; meridian holocausts in a visceral and medullar penetrability."
The extravagance of these phrases illustrates how every attempt to describe religious experience has to be, of necessity, "a raid on the inarticulate," as the poet T.S. Elliot put it. If God is ineffable - and all the religions are agreed that he is - a degree of linguistic modesty ought to figure among the prime religious virtues.
It is a lesson the religious, of all faiths, are apt to forget. Consider, for instance, how Reverend Pat Robertson, the American evangelist, spoke one of the names of God. Speaking of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, he said: The conflict is about "whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is supreme."
Almost every word in that statement is nonsense, Firstly, Hubal was a pre-Islamic pagan god that Prophet Muhammad rejected. Secondly, "Jehovah" is not a name that appears anywhere in the Jewish Bible. It is an English mistransliteration of the Jewish Tetragrammaton, YHWH. Most scholars now believe the Tetragrammaton is better vocalised in English as "Yahweh". And thirdly, "Allah", far from being un-Christian, is related to the word that Jesus Christ himself - who spoke Aramaic, let us not forget, not English, Greek or Latin - would have used to refer to God: Elah or Alah.
Which brings us to the nonsense uttered on the other side - by the Muslim Pat Robertsons of Malaysia. Christians, they have ruled, cannot use "Allah" to refer to God in Malay translations of the Bible. The word is unique to Islam, they insist. It would confuse Muslims - and presumably God too - if Christians used the same word. These assertions make no sense whatsoever - culturally, historically and linguistically.
A section of my family on my mother's side are Chitti Melakas, the Indian version of Baba Chinese. For as long as I remember, they have always referred to God, when speaking in Malay, as Tuan Allah or 'Lord God', though they are Hindus.
They are not the only ones. To this day, hundreds of thousands of Arab Christians call God "Allah". Arabic-speaking Jews do the same. There is no indication Arabic-speaking Muslims have been confused as a result.
Arab scholars and Imams would know what linguists have established beyond a shadow of doubt: The word for "God" in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, all Semitic languages, are so closely related as to be virtually indistinguishable. The Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - may have different conceptions of God, but etymologically-speaking, they all call God by the same name.
The Arabic Allah shares the same root as the Hebrew Elohim and the Aramaic Alaha. Elohim derives from eloh (Hebrew for "God"), Alaha is an emphatic form of alah (Aramaic for "God"), and Allah is linked to ilah (Arabic for "God").
"All three of these Semitic words for 'God' - eloh, alah and ilah - are etymologically equivalent," as Dr Abd-Allah notes. "The slight modifications between them reflect different pronunciations conforming to the historical pattern of morphological shifts in each tongue."
How would it be possible to say Christians cannot say "Allah" when Christ himself - who walked the face of the Earth six centuries before Prophet Muhammad did, and is accepted by Muslims as a prophet - would have said Alah, Elah or Alaha?
There are reasons why the Quran calls Jews and Christians ahl al-kitab - "People of the Book". They share the same religious texts as Muslims; they share similar revelations; and the Semitic languages they spoke are more closely linked than are Sanskrit, Latin, English and the other Indo-European languages.
There are two ways in which this linguistically meaningless argument in Malaysia may be resolved.
One, Malaysia's Islamic authorities might consider what word for "God" the Prophet would have used when speaking to his wife's cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Christian. For two years after he first received God's revelations, the Prophet spoke of his experiences to nobody other than his wife Khadija and her cousin.
Would he have told his Christian relative: No you can't say "Allah"; say "Tuan" or "God" or "Deus"?
If the Malaysian authorities can confirm this could not possibly have been the case, then the matter might be closed: All Christians, like the Prophet's relative, may be allowed to say "Allah".
But if the authorities still insist that what was admissable for the Prophet's relative should be inadmissable now, for whatever reason, then they might consider another option. Denied the right to use "Allah", Christian Malaysians may be allowed to go back to their linguistic roots, and use the Aramaic Alah or Alaha as Christ would have.
One letter "l" less or one syllable "a" more than "Allah" - that should be enough to prevent the impossible and non-existent confusion of Islam and Christianity in Malaysia.
janadas@sph.com.sg
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