Thursday, January 21, 2010

Who is He again?

There has been a lot of commotion going on these past few weeks regarding the use of ‘Allah’ in referring to Jesus by the Christians in Malaysia. Amongst the Muslims unfortunately breakage of groups further and adds to the already existing ones. Those who agree give their opinions based on either academic rationale be it Islamic wise or historical wise or pure freedom of rights. Those who disagree too give their opinions based on academic rationale Islamic wise and historical too.
As a humble servant, I am writing this only to give my point of view over the unnecessary dispute. If you want to introduce anyone to anybody, you most likely will introduce the person by his/her name. The person to whom you introduced the first person will then remember the person being introduced (some may take a few re-introductions before recognizing a person, some remember effortlessly). The question lies on how do you actually remember a person or anything? It is very simple, you do not really remember, your mind only register a specific character(s) of the person that distinguish the person from everyone else. You might remember ‘A’ because he has a thick moustache or his bespectacled being or because he likes to use a certain phrase or word. Anything!
Thus how has Allah tell us how we can recognize Him and distinguish Him from other god(s)?
Say: He is Allah, the One and Only; Allah, the Eternal, Absolute; He begets not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him.
(al-Ikhlas: 1-4)
If anyone or anything fits in all the attribution of ‘Allah’ then it deserves to be called Allah. If not then it doesn’t.
The second thing that I find grieving is how we do not consider others work and how our opinion (though it is perfectly right) can affect them. It is easy for academics to give their opinion generally but Islam has taught us that in making any decision you must follow the shari’ah, sunnah and also ‘uruf that is the culture of a society. If the culture fits shari’ah and sunnah, you may proceed. This brings us to the term waqi-‘iah that is the present time and place. There has been no confusion for the Arabs to refer Allah as Jesus or Allah as Allah. Yet will it not be confusing to be used in Malaysia? Is it really feasible in our country? What is the reason for using it? Why now? What is the outcome of it? What is the long term risk we are taking by saying yes now as our opinion is being sought and we give a straight answer backed with tons of reference just because we can? Or just because we want to portray ourselves as ‘the sought for leader’ to lead Malaysia? Put some thought in it, winning one chair here might just as well make you win a chair you never want in the hereafter. It is a personal call.
The academics that had not been to the root or the political party that could not spare a cent for the work carried out cannot possibly know how hard it is for the people working on the ground to get our youngsters to turn their face towards Allah and not something else or how these people had risked their lives and sacrificed almost everything they have to propagate Islam to the orang asli and how tiresome and how much trouble these people had gone through to teach comparative religion for free just to help others to understand Islam better and realize the discrepancy of Christianity so they will in turn do da’wah and propagate Islam. What do we say now? We have already owed them too much for not joining their course, let us save ourselves by not turning their efforts into vain.

1 comment:

naseebah (asfal awliya') said...

enjoined with the truth, says: Allah is the God, one and only, without son, has no father...tq k.neza....