The Malaysian Bar (http://www.malaysianbar.com.my)
Publishers of Malay bible taken to task , 27 April 2009
©The Sun(http://www.sun2surf.com/article.cfm?id=32772) (Used by permission)
PETALING JAYA (April 26, 2009) : Catholic newspaper Herald, in its latest edition, takes to task the publishers of a new Malay bible which uses the Hebrew words Elohim and Yaweh for God instead of Allah which, it says, is the correct Malay term for God.
The paper’s editor, Father Lawrence Andrew, told theSun: "Allah is the correct Malay word to be used in reference to God. There is no such word as Elohim in the Malay language."
He said Elohim is the Hebrew word for God.
"What I had discussed on the front page article is in reference to one particular text, that is John’s gospel, which was written fully in Greek, whereas the Old Testament was all written in Hebrew," he said.
Lawrence said the Greek word for God is Deus.
"In the first Malay-Latin dictionary, which dates back to 1631, the translation for Deus is Allah," he said.
This was the accepted term for God in Arabic and Malay for centuries.
"No one uses Elohim and this is a word alien to the Malay world," he said.
"We have a copy of this dictionary as evidence and evidence of the usage of the word Allah obtained from the Vatican library."
Lawrence said the publishers of the Malay bible in question also used the term Yaweh for the Lord, a term the Pope had decreed not to be used out of respect for God.
"We are of the opinion that we cannot just change the term Allah and put in a word of another language altogether in a Malay bible to refer to God," he said.
"The use of the word Allah in churches in this country has long been established and we even have prayer books dating back to a century using this term," said Lawrence referring to prayer books belonging to the Peranakan community in the Straits Settlement.
"The church in this country had used Malay as a language until the British came in and changed everything, where English was used as a language for administration and education," he added.
Last Friday, the Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur was granted leave by the High Court to quash the Home Ministry's decision prohibiting the use of the word "Allah" in the Herald Catholic Weekly.
On Feb 16, this year, Archbishop Datuk Murphy Nicholas Xavier Pakiam in his capacity as publisher of the Herald, filed for a judicial review to quash the decision of the Home Ministry and the government of Malaysia dated Jan 7, 2009 that the - publication permit for the period Jan 1, 2009 until Dec 31, 2009, is subject to the condition that the publication is prohibited from using the word Allah in the Herald.
Justice Lau Bee Lan also granted leave to apply for nine declarations, including declaring that the decision of Home Ministry and the government of Malaysia was illegal and ultra vires the Printing Presses and Publications Act 198 and that the word Allah is not exclusive to the religion of Islam.
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