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Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia use Allah to refer to God in the Malaysian and Indonesian languages (both of which are standardized forms of the Malay language.) Mainstream Bible translations in the language use Allah as the translation of Hebrew Elohim (translated in English Bibles as "God").[59] This goes back to early translation work by Francis Xavier in the 16th century.[60][61] The first dictionary of Dutch-Malay by A.C. Ruyl, Justus Heurnius, and Caspar Wiltens in 1650 (revised edition from 1623 edition and 1631 Latin-edition) recorded "Allah" as the translation of the Dutch word "Godt".[62] Ruyl also translated Matthew in 1612 to Malay language (first Bible translation to non-European language, only a year after King James Version was published[63][64]), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. Then he translated Mark which was published in 1638.[65][66] The government of Malaysia in 2007 outlawed usage of the term Allah in any other but Muslim contexts, but the High Court in 2009 revoked the law, ruling that it was unconstitutional. While Allah had been used for the Christian God in Malay for more than four centuries, the contemporary controversy was triggered by usage of Allah by the Roman Catholic newspaper The Herald. The government appealed the court ruling, and the High Court suspended implementation of its verdict until the appeal was heard. In October 2013, the court ruled in favor of the government's ban.[67] However, the use of Allah does not prohibited in the two Malaysian state of Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo as they have already use it since a long time ago.[68] In early 2014, the Malaysian government confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God.[69] |
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